CONGRESS, 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE 



Crovning Hope. 



BY G. Iv. YOUNG. 



Eternal Hope! when yonder spheres sublime 
Pealed their first notes to sound the march of Time, 
Thy joyous youth began — but not to fade — 
When all the sister planets have decayed ; 
When wrapt in fire the realms of ether glow, 
And Heaven's last thunder shakes the world below ; 
Thou, undismayed, shalt o'er the ruins smile, 
And light thy torch at Nature's funeral pile. 



-THOMAS CAMPBELL. 



^0C T 12 1893 . 

LYNN, MASS.: \^0/~ WA$^'^ 



PRESS OF G. H. & W. A. NICHOLS. 
1893. 



h 






Copyrighted by 
O. L. YOUNG, 



1893. 






s 



V* 



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The Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



PHEFRCE. 



In offering this little book to the public I have no 
especial excuse to make. It is not sent out to the 
learned, but to everyday people. I ask of those into 
whose hands it may fall that they read it carefully. 
If it has faults (as no doubt it has), condemn them; 
if it has merits (and it may have some), appreciate 
them; if it has truths (as I know it has), receive 
them ;— and may the blessing of the Lord so rest upon 
reader and writer that, when Jesus comes, we may 
enter into that rest which remaineth to the people of 
God. G. L. Y. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 
Hope. - 7 

CHAPTER II. 
The Crowning Hope. ------ 23 

CHAPTER III. 
.The Advent; its Certainty, its Object, and its 

Manner. - 42 

CHAPTER IV. 

The Present Effects of the Crowning Hope. - 75 

CHAPTER V. 

The Realization of the Crowning Hope. - - 94 

CHAPTER VI 
The Dark Side. - 118 

CHAPTER YII 
Condition of the World before the Advent - 131 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Facts of the Case. 155 

CHAPTER IX. 
Are We Near the End ? 173 




jPpe. 



CHAPTER I. 

Hope. 

Hope springs eternal in the human breast; 
Man never is, but always to be blest : 
The soul, uneasy and confined from home, 
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.— Pope. 

Hope. How bright a word! one that sparkles 
and glows with lustrous light! one that comes to 
comfort us when we are cast down! one that 
leaps forth to meet us and to greet us when our 
hearts are sad! 

Hail, thou blest word ! we love thee, and love 
the things that, in anticipation, thou dost bring to 
our view. Without thee our well-loved language 
were nbt complete. Without thee our very lives 
would still be dark. Thou art the opposite of 
darkness and despair ; and through thee we lift 
our heads and rejoice. Thou dost bring to us 
joyous prospects of good, and dost fill our lives 
with sweet anticipations of a gladsome future. 

Hope is the great incentive of life. It is this 
that, dwelling within the breast of men, spurs them 



8 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

on to earnest endeavors. Were it not that they 
expected to obtain those things which are desir- 
able they would give up in despair. The daily 
laborer goes forth to the toilsome work before 
him with a heart made light by the Hope of re- 
ceiving his wages for the labor performed. The 
hard working farmer plants in the Spring be- 
cause he desires a crop in the Fall, and it is his 
expectation to reap one. The mariner on his 
voyage homeward looks hopefully forward to the 
day when his vessel shall sail into the harbor of 
home, and he, after receiving the due reward of 
his labor, may have the happy privilege of meet- 
ing again those whom he loves. The young 
man enters college with the Hope that, by care- 
ful attention to his studies, he may receive such 
an education and become so developed mentally, 
that he shall be fitted to enter upon one of the 
learned professions, and so take his place among 
the thinkers of the world. And, if it were not 
that men were inspired by Hope, if they were 
not enthused by the expectation of future attain- 
ment and emolument, we fear their labor would 
be less hearty and their efforts less severe. 

From Joseph Addison's essay on " Religious 
Hope" we quote the following: "Our actual 
enjoyments are so few and transient, that man 
would be a very miserable being, were he not 
endowed with this passion, which gives him a 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 9 

taste of those good things that may possibly 
come into his possession. We should hope for 
everything that is good, c says the old poet Linus,' 
' because there is nothing which may not be 
hoped for, and nothing but what the gods are 
able to give us.' Hope quickens all the still 
parts of life, and keeps the mind awake in her 
most remiss and indolent hours. It gives habit- 
ual serenity and good humor. It is a kind of 
vital heat to the soul, that cheers and gladdens 
her, when she does not attend to it. It makes 
pain easy, and labor pleasant." 

"Auspicious Hope ! in thy sweet garden grow 
Wreaths for each toil, a charm for every woe ; 
Won by their sweets, in Nature's languid hour, 
The way-worn pilgrim seeks thy summer bower; 
There, as the wild bee murmurs on the wing, 
What peaceful dreams thy handmaid spirits bring ! 
What viewless forms the ZEolian organ play, 
And sweep the furrowed lines of anxious thought 
away !" — Campbell. 

Without Hope man would indeed be miserable. 
If misfortune came and cast him down, and he 
had no Hope of ever rising above it, the suicidal 
pistol ball would find his brain, or the poisonous 
draught his vitals. If sorrow and misery once 
were ours, and we had no Hope of outliving or 
getting beyond it, our life would surely be a 
blank. But in our darkness and despair, Hope, 
cheering Hope, comes to us ; and, piercing the 
gloom of our present, sheds luminous light on 



10 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

the possibilities and probabilities of the future. 
Were it not so the burden would be too great to 
be borne, and beneath it our poor hearts would 
surely sink. But that Hope which "springs 
eternal in the human breast," comes to us and 
soothes us, and bids us onward go. 

We all have Hope of some kind. One has 
Hope that his circumstances will change, and 
that the clouds which now overshade his life will 
at some time be driven away by the shifting 
winds of fortune, and the sunlight of peace and 
joy be his. One has Hope that, through his own 
industry, he may at some future time be enabled 
to remove from his present impoverished condi- 
tion and low-roofed hovel, to a more spacious 
home with happier surroundings. The mind of 
another glows with the pleasing Hope that, be- 
cause of his own shrewdness and financiering 
skill, he may attain to such a success in the busi- 
ness world that he yet may hold his head as high 
as some he knows. 

But even Hope is often deceptive. How sel- 
dom do we attain the full measure of that for 
which we hoped ; and how many are the times 
when disappointment quick and complete is the 
finality of our cherished expectations. As Alex- 
ander Cruden has said, " there is so much of im- 
potence or deceit in all the means used to ob- 
tain human desires, that the success is doubtful." 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 11 

"For Hope is like dew on the blossom of morning, 

The rinsh of the fair western sky, 
The perfume of roses, the mist on the mountain, 

The beauties whose life is to die, - *' 

This little stanza speaks truth regarding that 
Hope which is centred merely on the perishing 
things of earth. And so, as all " worldly hopes 
are terminated on empty vanishing things, gilded 
over with the thin appearance of good," we 
ought to be looking for something more real and 
substantial. And, we are glad to know, there is, 
within the reach of all, something more solid and 
more lasting. There is the Hope that comes 
from God, the Hope of eternal good. Said Rev. 
Thomas Dixon, Jr., " Hope is of divine paren- 
tage. Hope is the beautiful child born of the 
union of Love and Life, and reared in the light 
of Reason." 

Again we quote from Mr. Addison : " No 
kind of life is so happy as that which is full of 
Hope, especially when the Hope is well grounded, 
and when the object of it is of an exalted kind, 
and in its nature proper to make the person 
happy who enjoys it. This proposition must be 
very evident to those who consider how few are 
the present enjoyments of the most happy man, 
and how insufficient to give him an entire satis- 
faction and acquiescence in them. 

"My next observation is this, that a religious 
life is that which most abounds in a well-grounded 



12 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

Hope, and such a one as is fixed on objects that 
are capable of making us entirely happy. This 
Hope in a religious man is much more sure and 
certain than the Hope of any temporal blessing, 
as it is strengthened not only by reason, but by 
faith. It has at the same time its eye perpet- 
ually fixed on that state, which implies in the 
very notion of it the most full and most complete 
happiness." 

Said H. K. White : 

" The good man's Hope is laid far, far beyond 

The sway of tempests, or the furious sweep 

Of mortal desolation. —He beholds, 

Unapprehensive, the gigantic stride 

Of rampant Ruin, or the unstable waves 

Of dark Vicissitude.— Even in death .... 

Then, even then, that Hope forsakes him not, 

For it exists beyond the narrow verge 

Of the cold sepulchre.— The petty joys 

Of fleeting life indignantly it spurned, 

And rested on the bosom of its God. 

This is man's only reasonable Hope ; 

And 'tis a Hope which, cherished in the breast, 

Shall not be disappointed." 

Why do not people turn, more often than they 
do, from earthly hopes to heavenly ones ? Why 
not turn from uncertainties to that which is as 
sure as the rising of the sun ? Why not exchange 
human hopes for those that are divine? Why 
not go from human frailities and deceit to the 
strength and truthfulness of the promises of God ? 

Who would be satisfied with this present, 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 13 

earthly life ? Not merely is it a transitory exist- 
ence, but it is an incomplete one. There is no 
fullness of joy to be found here. Happiness 
without alloy is unknown. People are contin- 
ually seeking for pleasure, and yet abiding happi- 
ness is something that ever eludes their grasp. 
Try ever so perseveringly to find it, they are 
never successful in their search. To obtain full 
anfl perfect happiness baffles all their persistent 
endeavors. 

But how much misery there is ! On every side 
we see it. Its pitiful manifestations are all 
around us. We lift our eyes, and we see those 
who are weighted down by burdens of woe. We 
look, and we see lives from which all cheer seems 
to have fled. We look, and we see faces that 
bear but the marks of long suffering and distress. 
We bend our ear, and we hear a wail of woe. 
We listen, and we catch the cries of the sobbing 
millions. We listen, and the heavy, hopeless 
tones of dark despair are borne to our sympathiz- 
ing ears. We turn, then, to our own sad heart, 
and we find even that to be beating time to the 
funeral dirge of a sinning and sorrowing world. 
;c Humanity marches ever to this universal 
drum-beat of muffled anguish. The history of 
the world is the story of incompleteness, cruelty, 
and wrong, and suffering." 

This life, of course, is not without its joys and 



14 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

gladness. Winter with us is not perpetual. 
This life knows its vernal brightness, its summer 
bloom, and its autnum fruit. The dry desert is 
not without its green oasis. The voyage over 
the tossing, turbulent sea of time is varied and 
enlivened by the isles of beauty and pleasure 
which we pass on the way. 

But then again, no matter how happy may be 
our life here, no matter how free we may be fr^m 
those sad things which spoil the pleasure of life, 
no matter how smooth may be our pathway nor 
how bright our skies ; this is, at the longest, a 
short life. And, perhaps, when life appears the 
brightest, and our prospects the fairest, and we 
have reached the very summit of our expecta- 
tions, it may be that then the fell destroyer, 
Death, will come to us, and, laying his dreadful 
hand upon our vitals, call us to leave the active 
scenes of a busy life, and dwell in the dark dun- 
geon of the tomb. Death comes alike to all ; 
to the kingly form dressed in richest robes and 
sitting upon an imperial throne, as well as to the 
cringing sycophant who cowers at the feet of 
royalty ; it comes to those who dwell at ease and 
roll in the luxury of wealth, as well as to the 
abject wretch who gnaws a crust and sleeps in 
the gutter. We know that this life will not last 
forever; "It is appointed unto men once to 
die." Are we then satisfied with things as they 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 15 

are ? Shall we eat and drink, and live and die, 
and bestow no nobler thought on the possibility 
of a loftier existence ? 

Ah, this life does not satisfy. The masses of 
the people are not contented with it. If they, 
for a little while, were to cease their hurry and 
bustle, and give a little more time for sober 
thought, its incompleteness and imperfection 
would be brought home to them with greater 
force. And, even as it is, there is much of un- 
rest at the heart and unquietness in the mind. 
The conscience at times is sorely troubled, and 
well may it be. 

Those who do not find satisfaction full and 
complete in the present state of things can, if they 
will, have a sure Hope of something better. God, 
in His infinite goodness, has made provision for 
our eternal redemption. And he who is living 
with " no Hope, and without God in the world," 
is dead while he liveth. We need not go around 
depressed in spirits, and dejected in mind. We 
need not hang down our heads like a bulrush. 
It is our privilege to lift up our heads and re- 
joice. Our lives can be filled with cheer. Hope, 
cheering Hope, may be ours. We all can have 
the blessed Hope of future life, of future bliss. 
We all can ''rejoice with joy unspeakable, and 
full of glory." We can all " rejoice in Hope of 
the glory of God." We can look away by faith 



16 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

to the blessedness of the eternal world, and 
claim its joys as ours. We can become 
" heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ." 
We can "have a strong consolation, who 
have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the 
Hope set before us ; which Hope we have as an 
anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast." 
The darkness of our despair may be driven away, 
and the radiant light of a heavenly Hope, in all 
the fullness of its divine effulgence, stream in to 
our opened heart. The former emptiness of our 
lives will then be gone, and we will be overflow- 
ing with the welling fullness of an elevating Hope. 
We know there are those " having no Hope, 
and without God in the world ;" but there are 
others who have a Hope that is far superior to 
any of the hopes of earth. Some of us have been 
"saved by Hope." "We have our Hope set on 
the living God," and, as a consequence, we now 
"rejoice in Hope of the Glory of God." We 
have been "begotten again unto a lively Hope, 
by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the 
dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and unde- 
filed, and that fadeth not away." We have found 
that " whatsoever things were written aforetime 
were written for our learning, that we through 
patience and comfort of the Scriptures might 
have Hope." And so we are now glorying " in 
Hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 17 

lie, promised before times eternal." ' The God 
of Hope has filled us with all joy and peace in 
believing, so that we now abound in Hope, 
through the power of the Holy Ghost.' 

It is blessed to trust in God and to have a 
Hope in His sure mercy. As the prophet Jere- 
miah well has said : "Blessed is the man that 
trusteth in the Lord, and whose Hope the Lord 
is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the 
waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the 
river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but 
her leaf shall be green." As also has the psalm- 
ist said : " Happy is he that hath the God of 
Jacob for his help, whose Hope is in the Lord 
his God." "Happy indeed is that people that 
is in such a case ; yea, happy is that people, 
whose God is the Lord." For " behold, the eye 
of the Lord is upon them that fear Him, upon 
them that hope in His mercy ; to deliver their 
soul from death, and to keep them alive in fam- 
ine." " The Lord taketh pleasure in them that 
fear Him, in those that hope in his mercy." 

The patriarchs, the prophets, the apostles, had 
such a Hope ; and, amid earthly trials, amid 
affliction and persecution, in the lion's den, at the 
fiery stake, on the painful cross, it still buoyed 
them up and gave them courage and fortitude. 
It kept them while here ; it will be consummated 
at the proper time. 



18 THE CROWXIXG HOPE. 

How glad is that heart that has Jesus for its 
friend. How happy is that life which is filled 
with the joy that comes with the " Hope of the 
gospel." How blest is that soul who, amid the 
changing scenes and trying circumstances of a 
tempted and troubled existence, has learned to 
"lean upon its God." In what a fortunate posi- 
tion are they who have found by experience that 
it is sweet to drop their woes, their worries, their 
burdens ; and to " cast all their care upon Him, 
for He careth for them." 

The blessed religion of the dear Son of God, 
when it is felt in the heart and lived in the life, 
is an overflowing fountain from which pours a 
full measure of true peace. It is, even now, a 
source of many comforts and true joys. Amid 
the conflicts of life it gives a restful spirit, and a 
feeling of calm content that can be supplied by 
nothing else. 

But not only is it a religion of peace and rest 
and holy joy. It is pre-eminently a hopeful 
religion, the religion of true Hope, Not only 
does it benefit in the present, but it gives bright 
prospects of future good. It gives something to 
which we can joyfully look forward. And, oft- 
times, it is in the contemplation of future bliss 
that the true Christian finds his greatest pleasure. 
As he ponders upon the "good times coming" 
he is filled with emotions of most ecstatic joy. 



THE CROWXING HOPE. 19 

His meditations of the glories of future time 
often enrapture his heart, and fill his very being 
with thrills of heavenly delight. His visions of 
future happiness oft are the means of dispelling 
from his otherwise saddened heart, the rough 
realities of his present lot in life. He is cheered 
by the divine rays of the gospel Hope. He is 
saved by Hope. But hope that is seen is not 
hope; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet 
hope for? But if he hopes for that he sees not, 
then does he with patience wait for it. And in 
patient waiting he is supremely blest. As saith 
Jeremiah : " The Lord is my portion, saith my 
soul; therefore will I hope in Him. The Lord 
is good unto those who wait for Him, to the soul 
that seeketh Him. It is good that a man should 
both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of 
the Lord." Hope fills his heart, and inspires his 
life. Hope drives away his clouds, and brings 
into his life the sunshine of heaven. Hope keeps 
away despair and morbid melancholy, and bids 
cheerfulness and gladness be his. And, though 
his life may be beset on every hand by those 
contaminating influences which would tend to 
draw him away from the object of his Hope, 
yet he knows with the apostle James that 
u Blessed is the man that endureth temptation : 
for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of 
life, which the Lord hath promised to them that 



20 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

love Him." And he knows that the words of 
Peter are true when he said : " The trial of 
your faith, being much more precious than of 
gold that perisheth, though it be tried with lire, 
might be found unto praise and honor and glory 
at the appearing of Jesus Christ ; whom having 
not seen, ye love ; in whom though now ye see 
Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy un- 
speakable and full of glory" It is Hope that 
fills his heart with " joy unspeakable." It is 
Hope that makes his righteous soul to be " full 
of glory." It is Hope that bids him rise above 
the dank atmosphere of mortal existence, to soar 
above the obscuring clouds that would hang so 
darkly over him; and then, while bathing his 
enraptured soul in the resplendence of heaven's 
pure sunlight, to gaze beyond intervening time 
and obstacles, and feast his mind upon the eter- 
nal blessedness and joys that are to be. 

11 O, glorious Hope of perfect love ! 

It lifts me up to things above ; 

It bears on eagle's wings ; 

It gives my ravished soul a taste, 

And makes me for some moments, feast 

With Jesus, priests and kings.' 1 

When the true Christian engages in " the soul 
ravishing exercise of heavenly contemplation," 
how the comforts of God delight his heart. 
While he looks " not at the things which are 
seen, but at the things which are not seen," how 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 21 

his whole being is stirred by feelings of holy rap- 
ture. As he looks forward by faith to the blest 
objects of his Hope, how his heart is cheered 
and his glory rejoices. He gazes, and his faith 
is strengthened. He gazes, and his determina- 
tion becomes more fixed. Such an uplifting 
Hope is his, so bright, so enlivening, so eternal, 
that he feels he cannot miss its consummation. 
When the time of harvest comes he must be there 
to share its full fruition. And so say we all. 
" There is none on earth live such a life of joy 
and blessedness, as those that are acquainted 
with this heavenly conversation. The joys of all 
other men are but as child's play, a fool's laugh- 
ter, or a sick man's dream of health. He that 
trades for heaven is the only gainer, and he that 
neglects it is the only loser." 

He who lives the whole of his lifetime in the 
service of sin and Satan, and who at last sinks 
into a hopeless grave, has indeed wasted his 
precious privileges of salvation, and lived his 
life for naught. It may well be said of him as it 
was of the unhappy Judas, " good were it for 
that man if he had never been born." He has 
satisfied himself with the lower, ignobler things 
of life ; and, as a result, shall at last " utterly 
perish in his own corruption." But he, who, 
dissatisfied with the evils of the world and with 
the emptiness of the things of the present, does 



22 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

set his Hope on God, and looks to the glowing 
future for a perfection of life and a completion of 
happiness, is truly blest now, and shall be eter- 
nally blest in the ages that are to come. To be 
enlightened by Hope, enlivened by Hope, and 
uplifted by Hope ; to be thrilled with Hope and 
filled with Hope ; to be fired by Hope and in- 
spired by Hope ; is a condition supremely blest. 
And it can be the condition of each one of us. 
We may say with the poet that 

Hope's " blissful omens bid my spirit see 
The boundless fields of rapture yet to be.'' 

F. W. Farrar, discussing the iQ Theology of 
the Epistle to the Hebrews," said: "Hope is nec- 
essary, because the state in which we live is but 
a shadow of the state in which we shall be. In 
this view we can only realize the future by the 
exultant anticipation and inward evidence, 
Hope is not fruition. Here the ship still tosses 
on the turbid waves, but yet it is held by a sure 
and steadfast anchor, of which the golden chain 
passes out of our sight in that aerial ocean 
beyond the veil; — and the unseen links of that 
chain are held by the hand of Christ, w T ho has 
gone before us there." 

11 How cheering is the Christian's Hope 
While toiling here below ! 
It buoys us up while passing through 
This wilderness of woe." 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 23 



CHAPTER II. 

The Crowning Hope. 

11 A cheerful expecter of the best hath a fountain of joy 

within him ; 
Yea though the breath of disappointment should chill 

the sanguine heart, 
Speedily gloweth it again, warmed by the live embers 

of Hope.'" — Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy. 

If we are creatures of Hope, and are animated 
with Hope, then there must be an object for 
which we hope. We cannot hope unless our 
affections are centred upon some desirable 
object. Hope is "expectation of good; desire 
joined with belief." It is also " the thing hoped 
for; object of Hope." 

If we are not looking beyond this " present 
evil world " then we have no more than a per- 
ishing earthly Hope. He who has no Hope in 
the mercy of God has no expectation of good 
beyond the vanishing things of this life. It is 
said that " while there is life there is Hope." But 
death comes, and Hope is gone. For "when a 
wicked man dieth, his expectation shall perish : 
and the Hope of the unjust man perisheth." 
"The eyes of the wicked shall fail, and they 
shall not escape ; their Hope shall be as a puff of 



24 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

wind," " So are the paths of all that forget 
God ; and the hypocrite's Hope shall perish : 
whose Hope shall be cut off, and whose trust 
shall be a spider's web." 

But with the righteous man it is not so. He 
is divinely blest ; blest with an unfailing Hope. 
" The Hope of the righteous shall be gladness." 
And if he is made glad with Hope, and is " saved 
by Hope," and is " rejoicing in Hope," there 
must be an object upon which his Hope is set. 
There must be that for which he is hoping. 
" For we, through the Spirit, wait for the Hope 
of righteousness by faith." Now, if " Faith is 
the substance of things hoped for, the evidence 
of things not seen," then we think that Hope is 
the desire for those things, and the expectation 
of them. Hope, with the Christian, is the ex- 
pectant desire of future good; a desirous expec- 
tation of that which is worthy and lofty ; a 
happy anticipation of blessings that are promised. 
He not only has " promise of the life that now 
is," but of that also " which is to come." 

Paul teaches that " if in this life only we have 
Hope in Christ, we are of all men most miser- 
able." "But," says Wesley 6i if we have a Divine 
evidence of things not seen, if we have a Hope 
full of immortality, if we now taste the powers 
of the world to come, and see the crown that 
fadeth not away; then, notwithstanding our 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 25 

present trials, we are more happy than all men." 
If we are going to be Christians, we should 
be Bible Christians. Our faith and Hope should 
be in God, and in His word of promise. As 
Paul has it "your faith should not stand in the 
wisdom of men, but in the power of God." We 
should not have our trust in the vain philosophies 
of men, nor should we rest our Hope on their 
theories. We must go to the word of God, and, 
reverently turning its pages, find out what is 
there held forth to us as the object of Hope. 
We should find what the Bible places before us 
as the great object of Christian Hope. What 
are the promises of God? What is the teaching 
of His word? What, that has been revealed, 
can we look forward to with glowing confidence ? 
And I sincerely trust that the " Father of glory 
may give unto us the spirit of wisdom and reve- 
lation in the knowledge of Him; the eyes of 
our understanding being enlightened, that we 
may know what is the Hope of His calling" 

We know that " eye hath not seen, nor ear 
heard .... the things which God hath pre- 
pared for them that love Him." But we know, 
also, that He " hath revealed them unto us by 
His Spirit" And if God, by His Spirit and in 
His Word, has revealed to us certain things, it 
is our privilege to find out what they are. So we 
should seek to know what is the true Bible Hope. 



26 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

And, having once found it,' we should be sure 
to " hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of 
the Hope firm unto the end." We should not 
allow ourselves to be "moved away from the 
Hope of the gospel which we have heard ;" but, 
if need be, we should cry out with David, "Up- 
hold me according unto thy word, that I may 
live : and let me not be ashamed of my Hope." 
And, surely, if we get the true Hope, the one 
that God has given, it is a Hope that " maketh 
not ashamed ;" it will not be as rottenness to our 
bones, but will be the strength of our life and 
the gladness of our heart. 

We insist that men should have a Scriptural 
Hope, that they should have a Bible basis for 
what they believe and expect ; because we know 
there are in the world many false Hopes. Many 
Christians have a Hope that is not biblical. 
While we do not doubt the sincerity of their 
hearts, we do doubt if they be ready always, 
with meekness and fear, to give a Bible answer to 
every man that asketh them a reason of the 
Hope that is in them. And if they have no 
Bible reasons for their Hope, it is evident that it 
is not a Bible Hope. 

The church should have for her Hope, not that 
which the false philosophy of men has given to 
her, but that which God has set forth in His rev- 
elation. We should be "built upon the founda- 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 27 

tion of the apostles and prophets." We should 
have, and " earnestly contend for, the faith 
which was once delivered unto the saints." We 
should not allow ourselves to be contented with 
a Hope that is false, no matter how pleasing it 
may appear to be. We should be satisfied 
with nothing less than the true Hope. And if 
so be we have a false one, it would be a profit- 
able bargain for us to exchange it for the true. 

But what is the true Hope, the one only Hope, 
of those who are trusting in Jesus for salvation ? 

There is one event yet future for which we 
long. It is to be the grandest event of all the 
world's history. It is the centre of the Hope of 
God's true people. It was gladly predicted by 
the prophets ; it was joyously sung by the psalm- 
ist ; and by the apostles its transcendent glories 
were proclaimed. 

It is something for which many have been 
eagerly looking. They have, as it were, strained 
their eyes to catch the first glimmerings of its 
advancing glory. Their souls have waited for 
it more than they who watch for the morning. 
It is that for which many weary and heavy laden 
ones have longingly watched. Oppressed and 
afflicted ones have, with glistening eyes, long 
been noting each welcome harbinger that does 
herald its approach. In view of it, songs triumph- 
ant have often raised their gladsome strains on 



28 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

high, and their thrilling words of glad tidings 
of good things to come have cheered many a 
desponding heart. That it might be hastened 
many a fervent prayer has, on the pinions of 
faith, winged its way to the throne of God. It is 
sure to come, for God has promised it. It will 
arrive on time, for the Saviour himself told his 
eager disciples of it. 

It is the brightest Hope, the grandest Hope, 
the Hope of Hopes. It shines, it glows, it burns. 
In characters of living light it is written. It 
lifts itself far above all the other Hopes of earth. 
As the crown rests upon the brow of the king, 
so does this Hope crown all the holy aspirations 
of men. It is the fitting climax of all, the grand 
culmination of all the blest promises of God, the 
glorious and Crowning Hope of the gospel of the 
Son of God. It is spoken of in the Bible as the 
" Blessed Hope." 

What is this great event of which we speak ? 
It is the second advent of Christ, the coming 
again to this earth of the matchless Son of God. 
As one has said, "the realization of all our 
brightest Hopes is connected with this event. 
The consummation of all coming glory culmi- 
nates in his coming back again. . . . This word 
in the formula of the Lord's supper, ' till He 
come ' is the key-word of Scripture. It gives us 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 29 

the great Hope of the church, in which other 
hopes centre and culminate." 

E. A. Stockman writes: "The whole vast 
wealth of Xew Testament doctrine centres in the 
1 coming of the Lord.' Every sentiment of the 
gospel draws its beauty and power, largely, from 
the second appearing. , The personal return of 
the Christ is the key to immortality and glory. 
The revelation of the Son of God from heaven is 
the high-arched golden gateway to the kingdom 
universal and everlasting. Misconception of the 
doctrine of the second advent of Christ is likely 
to lead to false views of the entire redemptive 
economy. This doctrine stands at the threshold 
of true prophetical interpretation and New Testa- 
ment exegesis." 

Said D. T. Taylor: " There is but one Hope, 
namely, His appearing." And again, "there is 
but one panacea for all of earth's ills, it is the re- 
turn of her King." George Muller at one time 
said : " I have for forty-seven years been aim- 
ing at the conversion of sinners, and have sought 
to awake the church of Christ at large to look 
for His appearing as her great HopeP Said C. 
H. Spurgeon : " It strikes the thoughtful obser- 
ver that the coming of the Lord Jesus is far 
more the Hope of the church than any remedial 
processes, or evolutions, or progresses among 
mankind." Said M. R. Pheteplace : " He comes 



30 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

to execute judgment in equity, and rule the 
world in righteousness. He comes to banish 
sorrow from the heart, and forever wipe afflic- 
tion's tear from the eye. He comes to bury sin 
forever beneath the vengeance of His ire. ' Then 
they that be wise shall shine as the brightness 
of the firmament; and they that turn many to 
righteousness as the stars forever and ever'. Such 
a coming of such a conqueror, to bring such re- 
sults, is the desire of nations and the Hope of 
earth." Alexander Maclaren said, that " His 
coming must be for loving hearts as the morning 
spread upon the mountains. The Hope is blessed 
when the heart loves Him who is to come." 
Richard Boxter wrote: "The thoughts of the 
coming of the Lord are most sweet and joyful to 
me, so that if I were but sure that I should live 
to see it, and that the trumpet should sound, 
and the dead should rise, and the Lord appear, 
before the period of my age, it would be the 
joy fullest tidings to me in the world. It is the 
character of His saints to love His appearing, and 
to look for that blessed Hope?' During a dis- 
course upon " The Comforting Hope," the second 
coming of Christ, Fred. W. Jansz said : " To 
you, my hearers, I would ask to give a sketch of 
the subject in your imagination, and view the 
subject in a fair and Christ-like spirit, doing 
away with all prejudice, treating the subject with 



THE CRO)VNING HOPE. 31 

all logical fairness in Scriptural authorities, I by 
God's help doing my best in upholding this Hope 
as our only Hope and refuge, believing the 
appearing of our Lord and Saviour to be a fact 
and a reality, glorying in that Christ's personal 
reign on this earth renewed will be soon." 

Said John A. Cargile, of Alabama, " What is 
the grand Hope of the Gospel ? I answer, the 
second coming of our blessed Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ. His coming to the earth again is 
the only Hope set before us in the Bible." 

1 There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in 
one Hope of your calling.'' — Eph. 4: 4. 

1 For what is our Hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not 
even ye in the presence or our Lord Jesus Christ at his comingV 
1 Thess. 2 : 19. 

" His coming was the Hope of the apostles and 
the early church. They expected him to ' come 
to be glorified in his saints.' (2 Thess. 1 : 9, 10.) 
They turned to God from idols i to wait for 
His Son from Heaven.' (1 Thess. 1 : 9, 10.) 
They are taught to ' live soberly, righteously 
and godly, in this present world, looking 
for that blessed Hope, and the glorious ap- 
pearing of the great God and our Saviour 
Jesus Christ.' (Tit. 2 : 11-13.) In our day, 
however, there are many who reject the doctrine 
of the personal advent, or who fail to see any 
necessity for it." 



32 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

" Oh, the Crowning Day is coming, 

Is coming by and by, 
AVhen our Lord shall come in power, 

And glory from on high. 
Oh, the glorious sight will gladden, 

Each waiting, watchful eye, 
In the Crowning Day that's coming 

By and by." 

The early church held aloft the glad truth of 
the coming of the Lord. It was a doctrine dear 
to them. They loved it, because they loved Him 
who was to come. Their affection for Him was 
so great that they longed to see Him and to be 
with Him. He was enthroned in their hearts. 
He held the highest seat in their lives. He was 
the first one in their affections. And if they 
loved Him more than they loved any other per- 
son, it was but natural for them to desire His 
holy presence. If He were dearer to them than 
were all others what would be more natural than 
that, as He had promised to return, they should 
look forward with real pleasure to the time of 
that event? 

Speaking of the early church, J. F. Hurst, 
D. D. said: " The church loved to think of a 
peaceful and happy future. The early coming 
of Christ was expected by many of the laity, 
while some of the more serious teachers and 
scholars thought they saw in the New Testa- 
ment abundant warrant for the early introduc- 
tion of the millennium." 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 33 

The prophets had spoken of both His first and 
second advents. He had come the first time as 
had been predicted. The eyes of the disciples 
had seen Him, their hands had handled Him. 
They had rejoiced in His sweet and sacred 
society ; their ready ears had listened to the 
gracious utterances that had fallen from His 
loving lips. But now He was gone. They 
grieved at His absence. They yearned to know 
once again that presence which had been to 
them so beneficial and so blessed. And if, in 
fulfilment of the prophetic teachings, He had 
been among them once, why should they not 
have faith in the prophecies which taught that 
He should come again ? They were not mis- 
taken. They could not be. The time certainly 
would come when their eyes should see the King, 
not in His humility, but in His regal beauty. 

And then, had not His own lips said that at 
some future time He would come in the clouds 
of heaven with power and great glory? Had 
He not commanded them to " Watch," for they 
knew not the hour when the Son of man should 
appear ? And, even though He should tarry 
long beyond the time of their expectations, 
should they not obey His instructions and be on 
the lookout for Him? And if, while watching 
for Him to return, they should fall asleep in 
death, they could do so knowing that "them also 



34 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

that sleep in Jesus will. God bring with Him. 
For this we say unto you by the word of the 
Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto 
the coming of the Lord, shall not prevent them 
which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall 
descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice 
of the archangel, and with the trump of God ; 
and the dead in Christ shall rise first.'' 

And did they make a mistake in loving His 
appearing, in preaching His second advent, in 
listening " for the coming of His feet ?" We 
think not. In doing so they were but obeying 
His injunctions; and to obey Him is always 
right. Said Dr. Lyman Abbott : " Paul looked 
and waited for the coming of the Lord. Peter 
warned his readers not to be deceived by scoffers 
asking, 'Where is the promise of His coming?' 
John bade the children of God purify themselves 
by the Hope that when He shall appear His 
children shall be like Him. James exhorted the 
disheartened and discouraged to be patient unto 
the coming of the Lord." And further on he 
says : " If the early disciples erred by thinking it 
must come in their own time, we are in danger 
of erring by thinking that it cannot come in our 
time. They anticipated ; we procrastinate." 

And then again, it was at the coming of Jesus 
that they expected to receive their reward. Had 
He not said, " For the Son of man shall come in 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 35 

the glory of His Father with His angels ; and 
then He shall reward every man according to 
his works ?" Had He not said, " Behold, I come 
quickly ; and my reward is with me, to give 
every man according as his work shall be ?" He 
had most surely said, " When the Son of man 
shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels 
with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of 
His glory ;" and, after separating the righteous 
from the wicked, "then shall the King say unto 
them on His right hand, come, ye blessed of my 
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you 
from the foundation of the world." And so they 
knew they would not be rewarded until His 
second advent. They could not enter into that 
happy kingdom until the Nobleman who had 
gone into a far country, should return. They 
knew they were to be " recompensed at the res- 
urrection of the just;" but this event takes not 
place until the return of Him who is the " Res- 
urrection and the Life." They knew nothing of 
any reward to be given before the day of judg- 
ment. They knew of no short cut into glory. 
They knew that where He had gone they could 
not go. For He had said unto them : " Little 
children, yet a little while I am with you. Ye 
shall seek me; and as I said unto the Jews, 
whither I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to 
you." But they knew, also, that He was to come 



36 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

again to receive them unto himself. In this their 
Hope was centred. In expectation of that blest 
event they rejoiced, and in glad anticipation of 
it they waited. 

They did not look for their reward at the 
time of death. They had no thought of going to 
heaven when they died, and of becoming par- 
takers of the saint's felicity at the event of death. 
The did not sing, " death is the gate to endless 
joy." Paul did not expect his crown when he 
died. He said : " Henceforth (from this time 
forward) there is laid up for me a crown of 
righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous 
Judge shall give me at that day : and not to me 
only, but unto all them also that love His appear- 
ing" And Peter teaches that it is " when the 
chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a 
crown of glory that fadeth not away." 

In an address delivered before the Alumni of 
the Newton Theological Seminary, Dr. A. J. 
Gordon, that able and popular preacher of Bos- 
ton, said : " By a ghastly anachronism, death has 
been largely substituted for the coming of Christ, 
in the common teaching ; and thus a false centre 
has been set up in our eschatology, by which the 
doctrines pertaining to the last things have been 
thrown into eccentric relation. Ask the question, 
1 When does sanctifl cation end?' and the common 
answer is, 'At death.' Ask the question, 



THE CBOWNING HOPE. 37 

i When do the rewards of the righteous accrue?' 
and still the answer generally comes, from evan- 
gelical theology, ' At death/ Ask the question, 
' When does the resurrection take place ?' and 
the answer comes from Liberals and New De- 
parturists, and from a considerable company of 
the orthodox, ' At death.' ... To us it seems 
incontestably clear that the Bible makes the 
advent, and not the grave, the supreme goal of 
the Church's Hope. And lest you should accuse 
me of speaking presumptuously, I wish you 
would search the Bible for yourselves, and note 
how constantly the soul's progress toward per- 
fection is inspired and bounded by that one 
divine event, the coming of our Lord. You can 
collate scores of texts to this effect, all finding a 
fitting climax and summary in that grand utter- 
ance of Paul as it stands in the revised version, 
4 And may your spirit and soul and body be pre- 
served entire, without blame, at the coming of 
our Lord Jesus Christ.' The same may be said 
of the divine rewards. The promise of them is, 
almost without exception, timed by this great 
event." 

We quote also from another. " It is wrong to 
say of the pious dead, they have gone to glory. 

There is not a word for it in the Bible 

Not in dying, not while dead and the spirit rent 
from the body, not in hades, not at any period 



38 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

prior to the return of Jesus and the resurrection 
era, is the saved flock crowned with glory. To 
say that the redeemed are crowned in death con- 
founds victory with defeat, glory with gloom, 
and translation with hell ; while it makes death 
a partner with the Prince of life. But the pious 
dead are to be crowned with the triple crown of 
life, righteousness and glory at His coming ; 
therefore they are not crowned at death. Our 
noble founders did well in conference at Albany 
in 1845, when they unanimously resolved that the 
departed saints do not receive their crowns at 
death. It is, therefore, a christian doctrine and 
worthy to be received by all, that the whole 
body of saints are to enter the cloud in the 
divine presence, and that the true time of this 
glorification is the coming of our Lord Jesus 
Christ." 

" The glory and chief Hope of the church are 
not to be realized at death, but at the Lord's com- 
ing ; one is not to anticipate the other, but all are 
to be glorified together at Christ's coming. The 
Spirit designed that believers in each successive 
age should live in continued expectation of the 
Lord's coming, not knowing but that they should 
be among those found alive at His coming. It 
is a sad fall from this blessed Hope, that death 
is looked for by most men, rather than the com- 
ing of the Lord." J. F. & I?s. Commentary. 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 39 

Said H. W. Bowman : " The time for enter- 
ing the kingdom is ichen Christ comes in His 
glory. Then shall He say, ' come ye blessed of 
my Father, inherit the kingdom.' Not when the 
the saint dies, but when He comes ; not as dis- 
embodied souls, but as resurrected and translated 
men and women. Not till Christ comes in His 
glory are we to enter into glory, wear a crown, 
or inherit the kingdom. Hence to talk of enter- 
ing the kingdom at death is to subvert the re- 
vealed plan of salvation." 

This is the reason why the return of Christ is 
of such vast importance. All the true hopes of 
the Church cluster around it. The Church will 
not enter upon her long promised rest until the 
coming of her Lord. The Bride who is to be 
presented as a " chaste virgin unto Christ," will 
surely not be at the nuptials until the " marriage 
of the Lamb is come." And this will not be 
until " the Bridegroom cometh." 

The felicitous condition of the saints, their 
final glorification in the kingdom of God, the 
rapturous existence to which they ever have 
looked desirously forward, will not be theirs to 
enjoy until when " Christ, who is our life, shall 
appear :" but when He does appear, " then shall 
ye also appear with Him in glory." 

No wonder, then, that with earnest longings 
the true Church should look forward to the time 



40 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

of the " marriage of the Lamb." No wonder 
that, with unsuppressed emotions, she should 
hope for Him to come. No wonder that her 
heart should bound anew, that her cheek should 
take on a fresh glow, and her eyes sparkle with 
a new lustre, as she stands upon the threshold 
looking eagerly for the coming of Him whom her 
soul loveth. And as " signs of the times " tell 
of His close proximity, and her inspired ear 
catches sounds unheard by others, is it anything 
surprising that she exultingly exclaims, " The 
voice of my Beloved ! behold He cometh, leaping 
upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills?" 
" The one great Hope for the whole creation 
towards which, blindly and unconsciously, if not 
with intelligent desire, all are reaching forward 
is the " marriage of the Lamb." It is the Hope 
of the Bride who shall then be one with the Lord 
in all His glory, and power, and fullness of bless- 
ing. It is the Hope of the nations, who shall 
then know the blessedness of righteous rule. 
It is the Hope of the sore-burthened earth, which 
longs to be delivered from the bondage of cor- 
ruption, into the glorious liberty of the sons of 
God. And it is the Hope of the Lord himself, 
whose heart yearns over His church, purchased 
with His own blood, but still lying in the deso- 
lateness of death, or amidst the defilements of 
this evil world, and whose word of promise is 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 41 

( Surely 1 come quickly.' Let our response ever 
be, c Even so, come Lord Jesus.' Let our hearts 
be broken through our sympathy with the bur- 
dens and sorrows of all, and let us utter in His 
ear continually the cry that shall hasten the 
common deliverance. " # 



*Reign of Christ. 



42 THE CROWNING HOPE. 



CHAPTER III. 

the advent; its certainty, its object, and its 

MANNER. 

ki There is no dispute about the fact of our Lord's Second 
Advent."— D. D. Buck, D. D. 

• What a thought it is that this commonplace 
old earth of ours was at one time visited by a 
Being from another world. Jules Verne's im- 
aginative conception of a " Voyage from the earth 
to the moon" is not half so strange and startling 
as this. It is unique. It is more than unique. 
It is wonderful and soul-stirring. And yet such 
is the fact. From the celestial world of light 
and glory, One, in times past, did deign to come, 
and press this sin-cursed planet with His holy feet. 
Such a one was Jesus. He said, " I came down 
from heaven." We believe His word. But He 
is not here now. He has long since gone away 
again to the glory which He had with the Father 
before the world was. He has again been "re- 
ceived up into heaven." 

If He was here once, it is not impossible that 
He should be here again. He not only said, "I 
came down from heaven," but, before He left 
the earth, He said also, "I will come again." 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 43 

He came the first time to " seek and to save that 
which was lost." He is coming the second time 
to receive the saved ones unto himself, that, 
where He is, there may also His servants be. 
Then, His reward will be with Him, to give to 
every man according as his work shall be. Then 
shall the redeemed ones receive a " crown of 
glory, that fadeth not away." Then it is, if 
faithful, we shall enter into our long looked-for 
rest. We shall then inherit the kingdom pre- 
pared for us, and shall enter upon the joy of our 
Lord. 

And so, for a little while, we would consider 
the certainty of this event. Is Jesus really com- 
ing to the earth once more ? Will He who was 
here before ever be here again ? Will God's Son 
set His holy feet upon our earth at some time in 
the future ? Will that blest Being from the upper 
regions of glory, condescend to come again to 
this lower world, or is such a thought merely the 
conception of an overexcited imagination ? Is 
the second coming of Christ a revealed truth, 
or is it simply a vagary of fanatical minds ? 

Truly these are important questions. We 
dare not answer them wrongfully. And so we 
claim that Jesus is to come again. This doctrine 
is not an invention of man, but is a revelation of 
God. It is a prominent truth of the Holy Bible. 
It is the grandest and most momentous of all the 



44 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

great things which are therein contained. If God 
has said it, then it will be done. If He has re- 
vealed it, it will surely come to pass. There is 
no uncertainty about it. It is settled in heaven, 
and will be fulfilled on earth. Said G. C. Lori- 
mer, D. D. : "Now, it must impress us that the 
career of Jesus demands something more than a 
resurrection from the dead and an ascension into 
heaven. We are not satisfied with the climax. 
As far as it goes it is well enough ; but it does 
not go far enough. If this is all, if the ages are 
to witness an endless repetition of what has been, 
if the struggle between good and evil is to con- 
tinue pretty much as in the past, only varied by 
slight advantages on one side or the other, and 
if there is to be no decisive and triumphant out- 
come of the work which our Lord inaugurated, 
then there is an incompleteness about it which is 
hardly reconcilable with any fair idea of its 
divine origin. It w T ill not do to say that Chris- 
tianity is a flower whose roots are in the earth 
and its blossoms in heaven ; that the beginnings 
are beneath and its consummations above ; for 
we feel that what has been commenced here 
should be perfected here. If Christ brought sal- 
vation to this world, then in this world it ought 
to be fully accomplished; all of its blessings, 
fruits, and achievements should be witnessed in 
the very domain where they were first projected. 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 45 

This feeling the Scriptures abundantly justify. 
They foretell the time when Jesus shall return 
and finish the salvation which He began in tears 
and blood, when He shall restore all things, when 
the works of the devil shall be destroyed, and 
when the drama of redemption shall find a fitting 
close in glory everlasting." 

This is the utterance of an able pulpit of the 
present times. But is this a modern doctrine 
merely, or was it the faith of earlier Christians ? 
Let the following answer. 

Says a writer in the Encyclopaedia Britannica : 
" In the history of Christianity three main forces 
are found to have acted as auxiliaries of the 
gospel." When he enumerates these forces, the 
first is found to be " a belief in the speedy re- 
turn of Christ and in His glorious reign on 
earth." And further on he says : " First in point 
of time came the faith in the nearness of Christ's 
second advent and the establishing of His reign 
of glory on the earth. Indeed it appears so early 
that it might be questioned whether it ought not 
to be regarded as an essential part of the Chris- 
tian religion. ... It must be admitted that this 
expectation was a prominent feature in the 
earliest proclamation of the gospel, and materi- 
ally contributed to its success." 

From J. S. C. Abbott we quote : "It will be 
remembered that, when Jesus took His final de- 



46 THE CB OWNING HOPE. 

parture from His disciples, ascending into the 
skies in bodily presence before them from Mount 
Olivet, two angels appeared to them, and said, 
c Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into 
heaven ? This same Jesus, which is taken up 
from you into heaven, shall so come in like man- 
ner as ye have seen Him go into heaven.' 

11 The second coming of Christ, to reap the 
fruits of His humiliation and His atoning sacri- 
fice in the establishment of His spiritual king- 
dom, was a prominent theme in the teaching 
both of Christ and His apostles." He then 
quotes from Peter on this subject, and speaks of 
Peter's words as " emphatic announcements that 
the Lord Jesus, who had risen from the grave 
and ascended to heaven, would come again in 
glory with an angelic retinue to establish an 
everlasting kingdom." 

But it is principally to the Bible that we in- 
tend to go in order to find out as to the certainty 
of the advent of our beloved King. What a 
wonderful book is the Bible ! It is a wonderful 
book because it is the word of a wonderful God. 
It contains His revealed will to men, and the 
great plan devised for their salvation. God is a 
God of truth. Consequently His word is a word 
of truth. The Bible is His word ; therefore, it 
is true. " The Scriptures cannot be broken." 
They are immutable as their divine Author. 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 47 

Nothing then, can prevent their ultimate fulfill- 
ment. The things there predicted will, at the 
proper time, have their consummation. All the 
efforts of wicked men will not be able to over- 
throw the truth of God. All the powers of hell 
cannot prevent its fulfillment. 

The doctrine of the second advent of the divine 
Son of God, His coming to the earth the second 
time, is a doctrine of the Bible. It is a special 
and prominent doctrine. The event has not yet 
taken place. It must, therefore, be one of 
those truths of God whose fulfillment is still 
future. But so sure as the Bible teaches it, it 
will yet take place. Nothing can prevent its 
occurrence. Our disbelief of it will not hinder it. 
Our opposition to it will not be the means of 
staying its onward progress. Our fear of it will 
not keep it from coming. It is predicted in the 
word of God. It will come, then, with all its 
pomp, its power, its glory, its majesty, its sub- 
lime awfulness. 

This is a very old doctrine. When we turn to 
the Bible we find it, not only in the New Testa- 
ment, but also in the Old Testament. We be- 
lieve it was to this event that Job referred when 
he said : " I know that my Redeemer liveth, and 
that He shall stand at the latter day upon the 
earth." (Job 19 : 25.) It is certain that the 
Redeemer was not standing upon the earth at 



48 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

the time when this language was uttered. And 
if He was not standing on the earth at that time, 
but was to do so at the " latter day," surely He 
must come from heaven in order to do it. This 
could not refer to the time when our Saviour 
came to earth for the first time, because Job im- 
mediately connects his thoughts with his own re- 
surrection and with his own personal view of the 
Redeemer when he says : " And though after 
my skin-worms destroy this body, yet in my 
flesh shall I see God ; whom I shall see for my- 
self, and my eyes shall behold, and not another." 
Therefore we must conclude that reference is 
here made to that time when " The Lord him- 
self shall descend from heaven with a shout, 
with the voice of the archangel, and with the 
trump of God ; and the dead in Christ shall rise." 
Reference is evidently made to that time when 
Michael shall stand up, and when " many of them 
that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake." 
It is manifestly of the second coming of Christ 
that the psalmist speaks when he says : " Our 
God shall come, and shall not keep silence; a fire 
shall devour before Him, and it shall be very tem- 
pestuous round about Him. He shall call to the 
heavens from above, and to the earth, that He 
may judge His people. Gather my saints to- 
gether unto me ; those that have made a cove- 
nant with me by sacrifice." (Ps. 50: 3-5). This can- 



THE CROWDING HOPE. 49 

not point to the time when Jesus came before, 
for then a fire did not devour before Him, 
neither did He then gather His saints together, 
nor 'judge His people.' But it is at His second 
appearing that " the Lord Jesus shall be revealed 
from heaven in flaming fire" it is at the second 
" coming of our Lord Jesus Christ " that " our 
gathering together unto Him " shall take place. 
Consequently we conclude that the psalmist was 
speaking of the final coming of the Judge at the 
the great judgment day. 

And again the psalmist cries out in lofty tones : 
"Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be 
glad, let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof. 
Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein; 
then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice be- 
fore the Lord ; for He cometh, for He cometh to 
judge the earth : He shall judge the world with 
righteousness, and the people with His truth.'* 
(Ps. 96 : 111-13). This alludes to the time when 
Jesus comes at " the end of the world ;" when 
" we must all appear before the judgment seat of 
Christ." 

Even before the flood this doctrine was pro- 
claimed. God did not purpose that the ante- 
diluvian world should be ignorant of the awful 
truth that the time was to be when all mankind 
should appear before the Lord to be judged. 
And so we are informed that that holy man of 



50 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

God, " Enoch, the seventh from Adam," prophe- 
sied of this great event. " Behold," cried he, 
" The Lord cometh with ten thousands of His 
saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to con- 
vince all that are ungodly among them of all 
their ungodly deeds which they have ungodly 
committed, and of all their hard speeches which 
ungodly sinners have spoken against Him." 
{Jude 14: 15.) This is so plain it needs no 
comment. 

Isaiah speaks many times of the last glorious 
appearing of the Messiah. We give but few 
quotations here. "O, thou that tellest good 
tidings to Zion, get thee up into the high mount- 
ain ; O, thou that tellest good tidings to Jerusa- 
lem, lift up thy voice with strength ; lift it up, 
be not afraid ; say unto the cities of Judah, Be- 
hold, your God ! Behold, the Lord will come as 
a mighty one, and His arm shall rule for Him : 
behold, His reward is with Him, and His recom- 
pense before Him." (Is. 40 : 9, 10. R. V.) 
We think this refers directly to the Second 
Coming of Jesus. He is coming with rewards. 
He did not reward at his first advent. He is to 
-do that when He comes again. Hear His own 
words on that point. " Behold, I come quickly; 
and my reward is with me, to give every man 
according as his work shall be." (Rev. 22 : 12.) 
And again ; " For the Son of man shall come in 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 51 

the glory of His Father with His angels ; and 
then He shall reward every man according to his 
works." (Matt. 16: 27.) 

This event is spoken of in Is. 35 : 4. " Say to 
them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear 
not : behold, your God will come with vengeance, 
even God with a recompense ; He will come and 
save you." And again in Chap. 66: 15. "For, 
behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with 
His chariots like a whirlwind, to render His 
anger with fury, and His rebuke with flames of 
fire." Perhaps these quotations will be sufficient 
to show the certainty of the Second Advent as 
taught by the Old Testament worthies. 

We would now turn to the apostles ; and, from 
their allusions to this subject, we will select a few 
passages that are to the purpose. First from 
Paul, whose gospel was not after man, for he 
received it not from man, neither was he taught 
it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. 
So if his gospel was revealed unto him by the 
Lord Jesus, we can place all confidence in it. 

He says in Phil. 3 : 20, " Our conver- 
sation is in heaven, from whence also we look 
for the Saviour." It is evident that Paul and 
those whom he had instructed would not be 
looking for the Saviour unless they expected 
Him ; and evidently they did not expect Him 



52 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

to come without having good reasons for it. It 
had been revealed. 

And again he says in Col. 3: 4, "When 
Christ, who is our life, shall appear, than shall 
ye also appear with him in glory." And in Heb. 
9 : 27, 28, we read : " As it is appointed unto 
men once to die, but after this the judgment : 
so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of 
many ; and unto them that look for Him shall 
He appear the second time without sin unto sal- 
vation." Then in chap. 10 : 36, 37, " For ye 
have need of patience, that, after ye have done 
the will of God, ye might receive the promise. 
For yet a little while, and He that shall come 
will come, and will not tarry." Here the writer 
is so positive of the coming of the Saviour the 
" second time " that he speaks of Him as "He 
that shall come ;" and says of Him emphatically 
that He "will come." And to this we agree. 

Said the apostle Peter: "We have not fol- 
lowed cunningly devised fables, when we made 
known unto you the power and coining of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, but were eye witnesses of 
His majesty. For He received from God the 
Father honor and glory, when there came such a 
voice to Him from the excellent glory, ' This is 
my beloved Son, in whom I am well j)leased.' 
And this voice which came from heaven we heard 
when we were with Him in the holy mount." 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 53 

The glimpse Peter had been privileged to have 
of Jesus in His majestic transfiguration glory 
(Mat. 17 : 1-9), had deeply impressed his heart, 
and he knew that the transitory brightness of 
that time but shadowed forth the eternal glory 
that was to be revealed at the Second Advent. 
And again, this apostle speaks of scoffers arising 
in the last days and mockingly inquiring, 
il Where is the promise of His coming?" But, 
though they in their blind unbelief and willing 
ignorance, will be able to see no signs of His ap- 
pearing, yet Peter, a little further on, assures us 
that " The day of the Lord will come as a thief 
in the night ; in the which the heavens shall pass 
away with a great noise, and the elements shall 
melt with a fervent heat, the earth also ; and the 
works that are therein shall be burned up." 

John the beloved disciple speaks of the Ad- 
vent of Jesus when he says : " And now, little 
children, abide in Him ; that, when He shall ap- 
$)ear, we may have confidence, and not be 
ashamed before Him at His coming." And in 
Rev. 1 : 7, he enthusiastically cries out : " Be- 
hold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye 
shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him ; 
and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of 
Him. Even so, Amen." Mr. Wesley comments 
on this passage as follows : " He cometh — Jesus 
Christ. Throughout this book, whenever it is 



54 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

said, He cometh, it means His glorious coming. 
The preparation for this began at the destruction 
of Jerusalem, and more particularly at the time 
of writing this book, and goes on without any 
interruption till that grand event is accomplished. 
Therefore it is never said in this book, He will 
come, but He cometh. And yet it is not said, 
He cometh again. For when He came before, 
it was not like himself, but in the form of a 
servant. But His apjDearing in glory is properly 
His coming, namely, in a manner worthy of the 
Son of God." 

And now we would come to a few of the many 
utterances upon this subject by our Saviour him- 
self. Let us be careful to heed the teachings of 
Jesus. Let us not be careless regarding His 
words. They are words of living light and of 
eternal truth; and, though heaven and earth 
pass away, yet His words will not pass away. 

In Mat. 25 : 31, He speaks of the time "When 
the Son of man shall come in His glory." And 
in chap. 26 : 64, after the high priest had excit- 
edly and angrily adjured Him to tell whether He 
was the Christ, the Son of God, "Jesus saith un- 
to him, Thou hast said : nevertheless I say unto 
you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man 
sitting on the right hand of power, and coming 
in the clouds of heaven." And again in Luke 
21 : 25-27, we read : " There shall be signs in the 



THE CB OWNING HOPE, 55 

sun, and in the moon, and in the stars ; and upon 
the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; 
the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts 
failing them for fear, and for looking after those 
things which are coming on the earth, for the 
powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then 
shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud 
with power and great glory." Such language is- 
too plain to be mistaken. 

Some of our Lord's parables have direct bear- 
ing upon His return to earth. The parable of 
the Ten Virgins (Mat. 25 : 1-13) is right to the 
point. There, the coming of the bridegroom pos- 
itively indicates the glorious advent from the 
skies of the heavenly Bridegroom. The parable 
of the Talents (Mat. 25 : 14-30) teaches lessons 
concerning this important event. The man tak- 
ing his journey into a far country represents the 
Saviour going away to heaven itself. Verse 19, 
which reads, "After a long time the Lord of 
those servants cometh, and reckoneth with them," 
teaches the long absence of Jesus from the earth, 
and His final return to reckon with His servants 
at the Judgment Day. 

Then, again, the parable of the Pounds, (Luke 
19: 11-27,) is pertinent. Jesus begins by say- 
ing, " A certain nobleman went into a far 
country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to 
return. And he called his ten servants, and 



56 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

delivered them ten pounds, and said unto them, 
Occupy till I come." Not only was this noble- 
man going away, but he intended to return; 
and, as he did not purpose to have his servants 
idle during his absence, he gives them some- 
thing to do, and instructs them to " occupy." 
And while they are thus doing they are to have 
continually in view the thought that it was not 
his intention to remain away always, but that 
at some future time he would again appear on 
the scene. For the command was, " Occupy 
till I corned D. D. Buck, D. D., speaking of 
this parable, writes : " Our Lord undoubtedly 
had reference, as an illustration, to the method 
by which Herod the Great obtained the king- 
dom of Judea. He went to Rome for the pur- 
pose of obtaining the title and kingly authority 
from the emperor. He received the kingdom at 
Rome, not to exercise his kingly authority there, 
but- to return to the country from which he 
departed when he went to Rome, that he might 
reign as king over the provinces chiefly inhabited 
by the Jews, . . . Now here we have the pur- 
pose of our Lord (assuming that He refers to 
himself) in going to the t far country,' that is, to 
heaven. It was to c Receive for himself a king- 
dom, and to return/ He did not expect to find 
the kingdom located in the ' far country,' or to 
exercise His regal authority there. He was to 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 57 

1 return ' to the locality from which He went, 
to exercise His kingly office where His provinces 
and His subjects were." 

Truly, Jesus is to return. The Bible so 
teaches. Its certainty is well established. There 
is no doubt of it. May we accept this great and 
all-important truth, and make preparations ade- 
quate for so stupendous an event. 

And next, we would pause (although we did 
not intend to do so) to consider some of the 
objects of Christ's return. Why is He coming 
again ? For what purpose is He to return ? We 
are sure He will not come in vain. Humanity 
may do things and hardly know why they are 
done, but not so with Divinity. When the Lord 
does anything it is always with a definite object 
in view. And thus it is with His second com- 
ing. We will touch upon a few of the principal 
objects of His return. 

First, when He returns it will be to 

RAISE THE DEAD. 

That a resurrection of the dead is taught in 
the Bible we all know. Death came to the 
world because of the transgression of Adam, but 
life comes to the world through the righteous- 
ness of Christ. " For since by man came death, 
by man came also the resurrection of the dead." 
Those who have died are to be made alive. 



58 THE CROWNING UOPE. 

Those who sleep in their graves are to be 
awakened. Those who have fallen down in death 
are to be raised up. Although their bodies may 
have long since dissolved, though they may have 
returned to the elements of which they were com- 
posed, though dust has returned to dust, yet by 
the power of God there is to be a resurrection of 
the dead. This is the teaching of the Bible. It 
is through a resurrection that the dead saints are 
to enter upon their j3romised eternal life. " Mar- 
vel not at this ; for the *hour is coming in which 
all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, 
and shall come forth ; they that have done good, 
unto the resurrection of life ; and they that have 
done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." 

Multitudes of God's dear ones are cold in 
death. In all parts of the earth their scattered 
bones are lying. But one object of the advent 
of the Messiah is that He may raise these dead 
ones. They are to be raised at his coming, and 
not until then. " For as in Adam all die, even 
so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every 
man in his own order ; Christ the first fruits ; 
afterwards they that are Christ's at His coming?'' 
" The Lord himself shall descend. . . . and the 
dead in Christ shall rise." "At that time shall 
Michael stand up. . . . and at that time thy 
people shall be delivered, every one that shall be 
found written in the book. And many of them 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 59 

that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, 
some to everlasting life, and some to shame and 
everlasting contempt." It is when the Lord 
cometh out of His place to punish the inhabitants 
of the earth for their iniquity, that the earth 
shall disclose her blood and no more cover her 
slain. It is when the trumpet shall sound at the 
coming of Jesus that the dead saints shall be 
raised incorruptible, and the living saints shall 
be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an 
eye, and shall be made immortal. 

Again, when Jesus comes the second time it 
will be to 

JUDGE THE WORLD. 

A time of judgment is taught throughout the 
Bible, both in the Old Testament and in the 
New. " The Lord will judge His people." 
" God shall judge the righteous and the wicked." 
" God shall bring every work into judgment." 
" We must all appear before the judgment seat 
of Christ." " Every one of us shall give account 
of himself to God." " The Lord knoweth how 
to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to 
reserve the unjust unto the Day of Judgment to 
be punished." 

The time of judgment will be when Jesus 
comes. To sit as Judge on the throne of eter- 
nal justice is one of the objects of His return. 
Judgment is not going on all the time as some 



60 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

people try to make themselves believe. Men are 
not judged when they die. But God "hath 
appointed a day in which He will judge the 
world." Jesus said, " The word that I have 
spoken, the same shall judge him (not at death, 
but) in the last day" This " last day," this day 
that is "appointed," is when Jesus comes. Noth- 
ing is to be judged "before the time, until the 
Lord comes" But at that time the world will 
be judged. Then it shall be known whether or 
not our lives have been lived in vain. Then 
shall we answer for ourselves for the way Ave 
have here conducted ourselves. 

We know that judgment is to take place when 
Jesus comes, because the Bible so teaches. 
" For He cometh to judge the earth." " Our 
God shall come, and shall not keep silence. . . . 
He shall call to the heavens from above, and to 
the earth, that He may judge His people." " He 
shall judge the quick and the dead at His appear- 
ing" It is when He shall come in the glory of 
His Father, sitting upon His glorious throne, 
that the nations shall be gathered before Him, 
and He shall separate the righteous from the 
wicked. 

And, again, when Jesus comes it will be to 

GIVE REWARDS. 

Of course people will not be rewarded before 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 61 

they are judged. That would be absurd. So 
rewards are not given when people die, not until 
the day of judgment when the Judge returns. 
" Behold," said He " I come quickly, and my re- 
ward is with me, to give every man according as 
his work shall be." The wicked shall then re- 
ceive their reward, or punishment. For it is 
" when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from 
heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire 
taking vengeance on them that know not God," 
that the wicked " shall be punished with ever- 
lasting destruction." This is the clay that shall 
burn as an oven, when all the proud and all that 
do wickedly shall be stubble, when they shall be 
burned up and left neither root nor branch. 

And it is at the time of the coming of Jesus 
that the righteous are to be rewarded for their 
faithfulness. This is the time when He shall 
make up His jewels. This is the time when He 
shall send forth His angels and they shall gather 
together His elect. This is the time when crowns 
shall be placed upon the worthy brows, when the 
redeemed shall be arrayed in white, when they 
shall be made immortal and shall joyfully enter 
upon their happy existence in the kingdom of 
God, where nothing can ever come to mar, to 
molest, to cause unhappiness. The trial of their 
faith shall " be found unto praise and honor and 
glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ" It is 



62 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

when the chief Shepherd shall appear that they 
shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not 
away. 

And, again, He is to come to earth once more 
to 

REDEEM THE EARTH. 

God originally gave the earth to man that he 
might subdue it and have dominion over it. But, 
because of man's sin, the earth has been placed 
under the bane of the curse of God. It is no 
longer as it was when it came from the hand of 
God, when He pronounced everything " very 
good." The earth has been subjected to vanity 
because of the sin of Adam. It now groans and 
travails beneath the curse. It is out of order, 
torn, and tossed, and racked, like a sick man. 
But harmony and beauty are yet to be restored. 
The second Adam, Christ, will undo the work of 
the first Adam. Christ has purchased the earth. 
We are now but waiting for the " redemption of 
of the purchased possession." Christ will redeem 
it when He comes again. He will bring: it back 
to its former beauty. It will again glow with 
more that its original glory. The world which 
was promised to Abraham and to his seed shall 
be theirs for an everlasting possession. God 
will keep His promise. It has not been fulfilled 
yet, but it will be when Christ shall come, when 
shall take place the "restitution of all things 



THE CROWNING HOPE. (53 

spoken by the mouth of all the holy prophets.'' 
God made the earth to be the abode of man. 
" He created it not in vain ; He formed it to be 
inhabited." It was to be inhabited by a race of 
pure beings, such as were Adam and Eve when 
they were first created. But they sinned, and, 
as a result, came the curse, and a race of sinning, 
sorrowing mortals. But God is not to be frus- 
trated in His designs. Earth will be redeemed, 
and upon it shall dwell eternally a race of holy, 
happy beings. Jesus, when He comes, will re- 
new, re-make the earth ; and upon the beautified, 
glorified, re-Edenized earth the redeemed ones 
of all ages shall peacefully abide. " We look for 
new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth 
righteousness." " The meek shall inherit the 
earth, and shall delight themselves in the abun- 
dance of peace." " The righteous shall inherit 
the land, and dwell therein forever." And, in 
order to fit it for their dwelling place, the Re- 
deemer shall redeem it when He comes again. 

Now that our faith is established as to the 
certainty of the coming of Jesus, and as we know 
something, also, regarding the object of His com- 
ing, we next would know something about 

THE MAXXER OF THE ADVENT. 

We have found that Jesus is surely coming, 
but how is He coming? What will be the form 



64 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

of His reappearance ? What the manner of His 
manifestation ? 

When Jesus comes the second time He will 
come in person. To a candid student of Script- 
ure there can be no doubt of this. He is not to 
come in a spiritual sense, as some pretend to 
suppose. The Spirit of God was poured out in a 
wonderful manner on the day of Pentecost; but 
this was not the return of Christ. The Spirit of 
the Lord has been with true believers ever since 
that first outpouring ; but this is not the advent 
of Jesus. The Lord Jesus, in fulfillment of His 
promise, " Lo, I am with you always," has been 
with His Church in a spiritual sense to aid, to 
comfort, to bless, for these centuries past ; but 
this is not His oft-predicted appearing. He is to 
come personally. The same Jesus who was 
crucified ; the same Jesus who was literally raised 
from the dead ; the same Jesus who said, " Han- 
dle me, and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and 
bones as ye see me have ;" the same Jesus who, 
from the view of His assembled, disciples, was 
taken up bodily and received into a cloud, — this 
same Jesus is to return to earth by-and-by. 

Those two white-apparelled messengers from 
glory who, as Jesus disappeared from the fond 
gaze of His loving followers, stood for a moment 
in their astonished presence, told the manner 
of His reappearing. " This same Jesus, which 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 65 

is taken up from you into heaven, shall so 
come in like manner as ye have seen Him 
go into heaven." And this is corroborated 
by Paul when He says, " The Lord him self shall 
descend from heaven." Not a phantom, but the 
Lord "himself." Not a dispensation of Provi- 
dence, but the Lord " himself." Says Sir Charles 
Sabine : " Did He spiritually go ? Then spirit- 
ually He will return. Did He go personally and 
bodily ? Then personally and bodily will He 
return. Who mocks the sorrow and taunts the 
hope of the loving wife, by telling her that her 
absent husband will return to her spiritually ? 
And where is the loving wife whom such mockery 
would persuade to quit her watch-tower, on her 
accustomed evening walk, that she may look out 
for and welcome the return of the beloved of 
her heart ? " 

Some conjecture that the Lord comes at death, 
that the death of the believer is the coming of 
the Lord to him. But this cannot be, as this 
would necessitate many advents, whereas the 
Bible speaks of but two ; namely, the first com- 
ing, which is in the past ; and the second, which 
is still future. " L'nto them that look for Him 
shall He appear the second time" 

Speaking of the Saviour's coming, Mr. Moody 
said : " Some people say that means death : but 
the Word of God does not say it means death. 



66 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

Death is our enemy, but our Lord hath the keys 
of death ; He has conquered death, hell, and the 
grave, and at any moment He may come to set 
us free from death, and destroy our last enemy 
for us ; so the proper state for a believer in 
Christ is waiting and watching for our Lord's 
return. 

"CHRIST IS THE PRINCE OF LIFE. 

There is no death where He is ; death flees 
at His coming ; dead bodies sprang to life when 
He touched them or spoke to them. His com- 
ing is not death; He is the resurrection and 
the life, when He sets up His kingdom there is 

to be no death, but life forevermore 

" Look at that account of the last hours of Christ 
with His disciples. What does Christ say to 
them ? If I go away I will send death after you 
to bring you to me ? I will send an angel after 
you ? Not at all. He says 1 1 will come and re- 
ceive you unto myself." ' 

Jesus said, "I will come again." "I come 
quickly." Notice that it is the i I ' who is to come. 
Jesus did not say, ' My Spirit is coming again,' 
or anything on that line, but ' I am to come, in 
my own proper person.' 

" c If I go,' says Christ, c I will come again.' 
The ' I ' that departs is the ' I ' that is to return. 
We know the He ascended personally, and per- 
sonally must He descend." 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 67 

"Jesus is to come personally. This is the 
evident import of His own words, and of those 
spoken on this subject by His disciples ; and, in 
this respect, His second coming is similar to His 
first." 

" We cannot resist the inference that the only 
coming known to Scripture is personal, and that 
He ' who is with His people even unto the end of 
the world ' is with them in spirit, and hence, 
when that end shall arrive, His manifestation 
must necessarily be bodily and visible." — Dr. 
Lorimer. 

"If Christianity, then, can teach us anything, 
or if the declarations of the Scriptures are at all 
binding upon us, as we profess to believe that 
they are, we must accept it as a truth, and rely 
upon it as an infallible verity, that the same 
Jesus who was born at Bethlehem, crucified on 
Calvary, and received up into heaven from 
Mount Olivet, is literally and personally to re- 
turn again to this world, to be seen with our 
eyes and heard with our ears, as He was see.n 
and heard in the day that He was taken up. . . . 

" I accordingly accept and declare it, as a doc- 
trine that must stand or fall with Christianity 
itself, that Jesus is literally and personally ', and 
with great power and glory, to return again to 
this world, once more to tread the localities 
already hallowed to His Church by His miracles 



68 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

and prayers, and tears and blood." — Hev. J. A. 
Seiss, D. D. 

Second. — When Jesus comes again it will be 
with 

" POWER AND GREAT GLORY." 

"He shall come in His own glory, and in 
His Father's, and of the holy angels." The 
whole heavens will flash with the awful resplen- 
dence of His divine presence. The skies will 
glow with the excellent brilliancy of His glorious 
Second Advent. " He shall be revealed from 
heaven . . . in flaming fire" When He came 
to earth before it was as a weak babe in Bethle- 
hem's manger. When He comes again it will be 
as an all-conquering King. " Thine eyes shall 
see the King in His beauty." When he came 
before, He was " despised and rejected of men." 
When He comes again, and His lightnings en- 
lighten the world, then all the earth shall see and 
tremble. When He came before it was as a sac- 
rifice to die on Calvary's cross. When He 
comes again it will be as Judge sitting upon " a 
great white throne." When he came before 
His enemies crowned Him with thorns. When 
He comes again then ' on His head will be many 
crowns,' and His friends will 

11 Bring forth the royal diadem, 
And crown Him Lord of all." 






THE CB OWNING HOPE. 69 

He came before in humility and weakness. He 
will come again in a radiant glory exceeding the 
brightness of the sun, and with all power in 
heaven and earth at His command. 

" The second coming of Christ will be magnif- 
icent and gloriously sublime, and no mortal 
tongue can truly describe the scene. He shall 
come an all-glorious King. The keys of death 
and the grave will hang at the immortal Con- 
queror's side; and His head will be crowned 
with a halo of glory that shall outshine the sun ; 
His garments will be no gaudy trappings of 
earth ; His flowing robes will be more beautiful 
than the rainbow; He shall gather the finest 
clouds of the universe and wrap them about Him 
for a chariot, and all the planets of the heavens 
shall shine in their brightest splendor as the 
Christ of glory comes down the pathway of the 
glory-gilded skies. He comes ! He comes ! 
The immortal Conqueror comes ! He comes to 
take the throne and raise the righteous dead, to 
change the living saints, and reign from shore to 
shore ! ... Oh, what melody comes rolling 
down the skies ! c Worthy is the Lamb,' they 
cry, ' that was slain,' to redeem a guilty, lost, re- 
bellious world!" — Rev. D. C. Wheeler, in 
Christian Reporter. 

Third. — When our Saviour leaves the heaven 
above to come again to earth He will be 



70 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

ATTENDED BY THE ANGELS. 

" The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from 
heaven with His mighty angels." He will not 
come alone ; but, in a manner befitting the eternal 
King, He will be accompanied by a splendid ret- 
inue of shining seraphim. He shall come at the 
head of an angelic train. The dazzling cohorts 
from the upper world will attend His earthward 
way. The brilliant bands of those blissful beings 
will fill the glory-flashing skies. " For the Son 
of man shall come in the glory of His Father 
with His angels? " Behold," said Enoch, pro- 
phetically, "He comes with His Holy Myriads." 
How magnificent will be the advancing page- 
antry of heaven ! How sublime will be that 
unparalled occasion "when He cometh in the 
glory of His Father with the holy angels." 

Fourth. — When Jesus comes to earth again 
He will come 

SUDDENLY AND UNEXPECTEDLY. 

M In such an hour as ye think not the Son of 
Man cometh." When the wicked world is 
dreaming ; when the people are all unready ; 
when they are laying pleasant plans for the far 
future, — He will come. As the midnight robber 
comes when he is not expected, so will Jesus 
come. " For yourselves know perfectly that the 
day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 71 

night. For when they shall say, Peace and 
safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon 
them, as travail upon a woman with child; and 
they shall not escape." As comes the blinding 
glare of lightning from the heavens overhead, so 
will the Saviour come. " For as the lightning 
cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto 
the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of 
man be." " Behold," said Jesus, " I come 
quickly" 

■ H Not slowly, slowly, like twilight; 
Nor, like the cold, creeping tide, — 
Or bark, from its distant offing, 
Moving on — o'er the waters wide. 
But instant ! like sudden lightning 
In the depths of a tranquil sky, — 
From west to east, — in a moment 
The havoc descends from on high. 

" The day of the Lord it cometh 
When the virgins are all asleep, 
And the drunken world is lying 
In a slumber yet more deep : 
Like the sudden lurch of a vessel 
By night, on the sunken rock ; 
All earth in a moment reeleth, 
And goeth down with a shock."— Bonar. 

Fifth. — When Jesus comes again He will 
come in 

THE CLOUDS OF HEAVEN. 

We are informed that when He ascended " a 
cloud received Him;" and those brightly ap- 
parelled ones said that he would come in the 



72 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

same manner that He went. Said John, " Be- 
hold, He cometh with clouds." Said Jesus 
himself; " Then shall appear the sign of the Son 
of man in heaven ; and then shall all the tribes 
of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son 
of man coming in the clouds of heaven with 
power and great glory." 

Some of us love to watch the clouds, they are 
so varied and beautiful. We have seen clouds 
of inky blackness; we have seen clouds of 
snowy whiteness ; we have seen clouds brightly- 
tinted and many-hued, made brilliantly gorgeous 
by the golden glow of the setting sun. But we 
never yet have seen clouds made magnificently 
glorious by the shining splendor of the presence 
of the Son of God. We have seen clouds 
charged with thunder and flashing with light- 
ning ; but we have never yet seen the clouds 
that are charged with divine wrath and flashing 
with the radiance of divine resplendence. We 
have seen the morning clouds as they enwrap 
the hill -tops and nestle upon the distant mount- 
ain side ; but we never have seen those celestial 
clouds that shall enwrap the awful form of the 
coming Mighty One. We have seen the clouds 
that carry rain to refresh the dry and thirsty 
land ; but we never have seen the clouds that 
shall be the down-speeding chariot of heaven's 
High One when He comes to refresh His waiting 



fHE CROWNING HOPE. 73 

saints with the welcome out-pourings of eternal 
redemption. But such a sublime spectacle shall 
yet greet the eyes of all. For, "Behold, He 
cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him." 
What a sight that will be ! How it will thrill 
with heavenly rapture the faithful ones who 
" love His appearing," and who have ' hoped to 
the end, for the grace that is to be brought unto 
them at the revelation of Jesus Christ.' Per- 
haps it will be some evening as, with tired bodies, 
but with happy hearts and meditative minds, we 
are gazing upon the colored clouds of sunset; 
when, of a sudden, the evening's waning 
light will take on a new brightness, and will 
lighter, brighter, more dazzling grow, until it re- 
veals itself to us as the advancing glory of our 
much-desired King. Or, mayhap, it will be in 
the day's early hours when the newly -risen sun 
has driven off night's darkness and has begun 
to scatter the morning mists away ; when, sud- 
denly, we shall see a " light from heaven, above 
the brightness of the sun," and on a glory-cloud 
we behold our Conquering Hero come. 

In bringing this chapter to a close we would 
again impress upon your minds the great truth 
that Jesus is coming to earth again. Receive 
this truth and believe it. Do not forget it. 
Have it in continual remembrance. He is com- 
ing personally, literally, visibly, in the glowing 



74 THE CROWNING HOPf. 

clouds of heaven, in awful pomp, with unlimited 
power, attended by the bright armies of glory. 
He is coming for a purpose. He will raise the 
dead, judge the world, reward the people, re- 
deem the earth, and reign triumphantly on 
David's throne .forever. We then shall want 
to reign with Him. We can do so if we will 
but make the effort. His word is : " Behold, I 
stand at the door and knock ; if any man will 
hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in 
to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. 
To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with 
me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and 
am set down with mv Father on His throne." 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 75 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE PJRESENT EFFECTS OF THE CEOWNING HOPE. 

We have been discussing an important subject. 
Great as are the various questions that have 
agitated the minds of men in our own and in 
other ages, there is no question greater than this y 
the Advent of Christ. There is nothing upon 
which hang more weighty and more sacred 
issues. This has to do, not alone with time, but 
also with eternity. This has to do with the 
great and mysterious future. We are interest ed 
in that which is before us. The coming of the 
Lord is that which shall directly affect our future 
destiny. We then shall find out whether it is to 
be well with us, or ill with us. " Surely I know 
that it shall be well with them that fear God. 
. . . But it shall not be well with the wicked, 
neither shall he prolong his days." 

There are many who love Jesus so much that 
they would like to see Him. Their affection for 
Him is so great that they are pleased at the 
thought of His reappearance. Such ones are 
designated as those i% that love His appearing." 
They have in their hearts the Crowning Hope. 
Upon this event of His coming hangs their one 



76 THE CB OWNING HOPE. 

Hope of future good. But while they know that 
the fullness of fruition and the consummation of 
their ardent desires will not be granted until 
the Saviour shall come, yet the very thought 
that He will come at some future time, has its 
effects upon them even now. It cannot do 
otherwise than affect them. With their hearts 
continually set upon this Hope, and with it con- 
stantly in their minds, it cannot help bringing 
about results in their present life. 

Are these results good or bad ? In the nature 
of the case they cannot but be beneficial. It is 
a good Hope ; it must, therefore, bring about 
good results. If we were gladly looking for an 
evil thing, and our minds were willingly and 
incessantly dwelling upon the evil, it could do 
nothing but bring about results of evil ; but as this 
is high and holy and noble, it must necessarily 
bring about corresponding results. 

" This (the coming of the Lord) was the firm 
belief of the early Christians, and this expectation 
with them was allowed to exert a constant influ- 
ence on their hearts and lives. It led them (1) 
to desire to be prepared for His coming; (2) to 
feel that earthly affairs were of little importance, 
as the scene here was soon to close ; (3) to live 
above the world, and in the desire of the appear- 
ing of the Lord Jesus. This was one of the ele- 
mentary doctrines of their faith, and one of the 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 77 

means of producing deadness to the world among 
them ; and among the early Christians there 
was, perhaps, no doctrine that was more the ob- 
ject of firm belief, and the ground of more de- 
lightful contemplation, than that their ascended 
Master* would return." — Albert Barnes. 

" But among all the mighty motives that God 
has placed before the minds of Christian men, 
whether to impress their own hearts, or to be 
used by them to influence those around them, 
there is one that stands pre-eminent in the po- 
tency of its influence, and in the universality of 
its application ; — a motive addressed to every 
single soul of man, which affects alike the desti- 
nies of the living and the dead ; which has had 
weight throughout all generations, and every 
clime and land ; and which, next to the inward 
working of the Spirit of the Lord, may be re- 
garded as a controlling force in the system of 
divine revelation. Not even the thought of the 
shortness of life, or the solemnities of death; 
the fear of hell, or the hope of glory ; the joy 
of the saved, or the ruin of the lost, — can vie in 
awful weight, and solemn majesty, and impress- 
ive influence, and awakening power, with the 
great fact that Jesus Christ, the crucified and 
glorified Redeemer, the humbled and exalted 
Saviour, the Son of Mary and the Son of God, 
shall come again in all the glory of his Father, 



78 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

to judge the world in righteousness at the last 
day 

" No external motive can be stronger in its 
influence upon both saint and sinner, than the 
consideration of that great event which marks 
the meeting-place of two eternities, the crisis in 
the history of the planet and the race, the hour 
which bears the burden of immortal destinies, 
which closes up this present dispensation of 
mercy to the world, and opens to our view the 
scene of glory which shall reach throughout all 
the ages, world without end." — JET. L. Hastings. 

Now, what will be the effect upon our lives if 
we fully believe that Jesus is coming to earth 
again, and that we will be obliged to stand be- 
fore Him to be judged? We read, "We must 
all appear before the judgment seat of Christ." 
And we know that nothing is to be judged " be- 
fore the time, until the Lord come, who both 
will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, 
and will make manifest the counsels of the heart." 
Christ is to "Judge the quick and the dead at 
His appearing, and His kingdom." Knowing 
this, and desiring to be prepared for that time, 
how will it naturally influence us now? What 
effect will it have upon us to have in our hearts 
deeply rooted the grand Hope of the personal 
return of the Saviour ? I say it will have the 
effect of 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 79 

PURIFYING OUR LIVES. 

In John 3 : 2-3, we read : " Beloved, now are 
we the children of God, and it is not yet made 
manifest what we shall be. We know that, if He 
shall be manifested, we shall be like Him ; for 
we shall see Him even as He is. And every one 
that hath this Hope set on Him [the very Hope 
we have been discussing] purifieth himself, even 
as He is pureT — R. V. 

This surely is a good result. And this is 
something that is needed just now. Men and 
women are no purer than they should be. In 
fact we believe many are hardly up to the stand- 
ard. But this Hope of the coming of Jesus has 
a tendency to cause people to become purer. 
Only holy men and pure women will be able to 
stand in that day : and so, because they desire to 
be prepared and to be received into " everlasting 
habitations," the conduct of their lives will be 
guided accordingly. 

And in Titus 2 : 11-13, we read something on 
the same line : " Denying ungodliness and 
worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, 
and godly, in this present world ; looking for 
that blessed Hope, and the glorious appearing of 
the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ ; 
who gave himself for us, that He might redeem 
us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a 
peculiar people zealous of good works." 



80 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

The following is from a writer whose name I 
do not know : " If a Christian lives under the 
power of this glorious Hope he will just as certain- 
ly be purified by it as the linen is to whiten out 
under the rays of the sun. You may say that it 
is too distant and mysterious an idea to effect us 
very strongly. But it is what we contemplate 
that influences us most powerfully, not what we 
see and handle merely. ' As a man thinketh in 
his heart, so is he.' The iron becomes magne- 
tized by the magnet against which it grinds. 
And the soul becomes assimilated to that on 
which it thinks. Christians are described in 
Scripture by this distinctive title — 'those that 
love his appearing.' We become like that which 
we love. If the object of our affection be a sor- 
did one, it will give a sordid and selfish tinge to 
all our thoughts and desires ; if it be an elevated 
one it will just as certainly exalt and sublimate 
our affections. Michael Angelo, by perpetual 
looking up to the marvellous frescos on which 
he wrought in the church domes, acquired a fixed 
upward gaze which he never outgrew, so that as 
he passed along the street he seemed all the 
while to be contemplating something in the sky. 
And Christ left this great Hope to his church 
in order that it might give a steady, moral uplift 
to the light — that so the disciple might have his 
face turned heavenward and not earthward. 



THE CROWNING HOPE. SI 

Mourner, do not look towards the grave and 
allow your life to reflect its shadows ; but look 
toward the sky and catch the light of the resurrec- 
tion morn ! Christian, do not look towards the 
earth or let your countenance be tinged with the 
reflection of the yellow gold, but look toward 
the throne and let your face reflect the light of 
the knowledge of the glory of God from the face 
of Jesus Christ. May God help you to be like 
men who wait for their Lord when He shall re- 
turn from heaven. 'For every one that hath 
this Hope in him purifieth himself even as He is 
pure." ' 

When Paul w^ould effect brotherly love and 
unblamable holiness in the hearts of the people, 
it is in view of our Saviour's coming. "And 
the Lord make you to increase and abound in 
love one toward another, and toward all men, 
even as we do toward you : to the end He may 
establish your hearts unblamable in holiness be- 
fore God, even our Father, at the coming of our 
Lord Jesus Christ with all His saints." (1 Thes. 
3: 12-13). 

When the apostle would admonish Timothy 
in regard to keeping the commandment, he does 
it in connection with the thought of the Second 
Advent. " I give thee charge in the sight of God r 
who quickeneth all things, and before Christ 
Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a 



82 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

good confession ; that thou keep this command- 
ment without spot, unrebukable, until the ap- 
pearing of our Lord Jesus Christ?' (1 Timothy 
6: 13-14.) 

When we are taught entire sanctifi cation it is 
in view of this same event. " And the very God 
of peace sanctify you wholly ; and I pray God 
your spirit and soul and body be preserved 
blameless imto the coming of our Lord Jesus 
Christ^ (1 Thes. 5; 23.) 

We desire to meet our Saviour in peace. It 
is our wish to be able to give Him a hearty wel- 
come. In order to do so we shall have to be 
prepared. We must have our houses in order. 
We must turn the buyers and sellers from the 
temple of our heart. We must allow no evil 
thing to make its abode there. We must allow 
nothing there that is wrong. There must be a 
careful cleansing, a complete renovation, a thor- 
ough purification. No impure thing must be al- 
lowed to remain. If, when Jesus comes, the 
heart is foul and filthy, we shall not be able to 
meet Him in peace. If unclean thoughts and 
unholy desires are abiding there, we cannot 
gladly greet the approaching King. 



' Nothing unclean can enter in 

Where Christ will ever reign ; 
His eyes, so pure, cannot endure 
The sight of spot or stain." 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 83 

And if we, by indulgence in sin, are spotted 
and stained, we cannot endure to meet Him. 
We know that He is coming. Our desire is to 
be prepared. We cannot be prepared while we 
are vile and impure. It must, therefore, have 
upon us the effect of purifying our lives, making 
them holy, just, and right, and causing us "to do 
justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with our God." 

The thought of the coming of Jesus will con- 
duce to the 

COXSECKATION TO GOD 

of ourselves and all our belongings. Not only 
will we, in view of the return of the King eter- 
nal, strive for holiness of heart, but we will see 
that the purified powers of our ransomed being- 
are consecrated, or set apart, for His service. We 
shall not be seeking our own will, but the will of 
Him whom we love and whom we expect to see 
so soon. For His glory our very lives will be 
set apart. Our lips will be used to speak and 
sing His praise, our willing feet will be ready to 
run on errands of love and mercy, our consecra- 
ted hands will be reached forth to help those 
who are needy, our bodies shall be cleansed 
temples of the Holy Spirit and put to no ignoble 
uses, our head shall be filled with glad thoughts 
of His appearing, and our hearts with true af- 
fection for Him. Believing that He is coming 



84 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

soon, all the affairs of our life will be conducted 
accordingly. Our loins will be girded about, 
our lights will be burning, and we ourselves 
shall be like unto men who wait for their Lord 
when he will return from the wedding ; and, 
when he cometh and knocketh, we will be ready 
to open to him immediately. 

Loving the appearing of the Lord Jesus, we 
will not allow ourselves to be enticed away by 
the things of earth, but will see how much 
more durable and valuable are the things which 
are yet unseen. Our minds will not be allowed 
to be carried away by the foolish frivolities of the 
world. The world's pleasures will not ensnare 
us, for we shall find greater joy in communion 
with God and with His saints, and in contemplat- 
ing the rich treasures and never-ending pleasures 
that shall soon be ours. We will not love the 
world, neither the things that are in the world, 
because we know if any man love the world, the 
love of the Father is not in him ; and we know, 
also, that the world passeth away and the lust 
thereof, but it is he who does the will of God that 
shall abide forever. 

If we are truly the Lord's and truly love His 
appearing, it seems to me that the knowledge 
that He is to return, and that then, if we have 
been faithful to Him, we shall be made in- 
effably and continually happy, — it seems to me 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 85 

that it would have the effect of weaning us away 
from earthly desires and worldly ambitions. 
The things of time are fleeting. They do not 
endure. But we are looking for enduring and 
unfading glories. Our present should be so 
swallowed up in the future that we continually 
should be living for Eternity and not for Time. 

We will not seek for fame. Even if we could 
attain to it, it would not be lasting. And we 
know that the applause of men is as nothing 
compared with the approbation of God. So we 
will seek His approval that we may " have praise 
of God," and be approved when Jesus comes; 
" that, when His glory shall be revealed, we may 
be glad also with exceeding joy." 

We will not be seeking after the world's 
wealth, its silver and its gold. But, on the con- 
trary, we shall have learned that " he that loveth 
silver shall not be satisfied with silver ; nor he 
that loveth abundance, with increase." We shall 
have found that earthly " riches certainly make 
themselves wings ; they fly away, as an eagle to- 
ward heaven." We shall have found that "the 
love of money is a root of all kinds of evil ;" and 
that " they that will be rich fall into temptation 
and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful 
lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdi- 
tion." We shall rather be seeking the " durable 
riches ;" we shall be laying up for ourselves 



86 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

treasures in heaven ; we shall strive with all our 
power to be cc rich toward God," even " rich in 
faith, and heirs of the kingdom which He has 
promised to them that love Him." Our present 
riches will be consecrated to His service, ready 
to be used to His glory ; we will be ever waiting 
to know His will concerning them, and when we 
find out we will act accordingly. We will not 
waste by a lavish expenditure upon ourselves, 
simply for show or for unneeded luxury ; but, as 
stewards handling that which is the Lord's, and 
is simply entrusted to us for a little while, and 
believing we shall be held accountable for the 
way it is used, we will ever hold it in subjection 
to the will of God, using it as is most conducive 
to His glory and to the good of mankind. We 
will, as much as in us is, be ready to aid in 
every good word and work, so far as we can see 
it to be to the glory of God. Not only will we 
do this by means of our good wishes and our 
prayers, but also in a more material way, finan- 
cially. 

Then again, the great truth that Jesus is com- 
ing, when it is felt in the heart, when it fills us 
and thrills us, when our very being is permeated 
with it, when we believe it so fully and so firmly 
that it has become a part of our life, — this grand 
truth is the greatest of all 

INCENTIVES TO CHRISTIAN WOEK. 



THE CE OWNING HOPE. 87 

It tends to make us active in the cause of 
Christ. It spurs us on in our endeavors to win 
souls for God. It makes us earnest in our labors 
of love, in rescuing the perishing, in raising the 
fallen, in encouraging the weak. It fills us with 
a passionate yearning to see people getting ready 
for that blessed, and yet that awful event. We 
know that, while in their sins, people are unready 
for it. We desire to have them ready. They 
must do something in order to be ready. And 
so we feel like laboring in their behalf, carrying 
to them the good news of salvation, telling them 
of a Saviour who is mighty to save all those who 
will forsake their sins and trust in Him for re- 
demption. The thought of the coming Judge 
and the approaching judgment, the thought that 
44 God will bring every work into judgment 
with every secret thing," and the thought of the 
perishing multitudes around us who are totally 
unfitted for that sublime and trying hour, — cause 
our hearts to be filled with earnest longings for 
their salvation. And as their salvation may, to a 
great extent, depend upon our efforts, how faith- 
ful it will cause us to be in the Lord's work. 
Jesus is coming ! Judgment is coming ! And 
people in no condition for such things ! O, may 
it have the effect of awakening us to a sense of 
our responsibility, and of making us more active 
in our christian endeavors than ever we have 



88 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

been before. Said Mr. Moody : " I have felt like 
working three times as hard, ever since I came 
to understand that my Lord was coming back 
again. I look on this world as a wrecked vessel. 
God has given me a life-boat, and said to me, 
' Moody, save all you can.' God will come in 
judgment and burn up this world, but the children 
of God do not belong to this world ; they are in 
it, but not of it, like a ship in the water. This 
world is getting darker and darker ; its ruin is 
coming nearer and nearer ; if you have any 
friends on this wreck unsaved, you had better 
lose no time in getting them off." 

But if a belief in the blessed doctrine of the 
Saviour's personal coming spurs us on in our en- 
deavors to reach the lost, what effect does this 
doctrine have upon the unsaved themselves? 
How does it affect the sinner ? 

I know of nothing else that has so much ef- 
fect upon the mind of unconverted ones as this 
great truth — Jesus is coming, every eye shall 
see Him, and all must appear in judgment before 
Him. 

We believe that the love of God, as it is re- 
vealed in Jesus, is one of the greatest influences 
that draw men to God. Their hard hearts are 
softened by the sweet story of love, their natures 
melt in tenderness before its softening power ; 
the love of Christ constrains them, and the good- 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 89 

ness of God leads them to repentance. But by 
many natures something else is needed. They 
are so infatuated by the world's pleasures, they 
are so deeply steeped in sin, their hearts are so 
calloused to all that is really good, that they need 
something that will stir them to the inmost recess 
of the soul, something that will startle them and 
arouse them from their lethargy, something that 
shall awaken them to a realizing sense of their 
true condition, something that will rill them with 
an overwhelming sense of the awful danger to 
which they are exposed, something that shall 
cause them to flee from the wrath to come, and 
flee for refuge to lay hold upon the Hope set be- 
fore them in a crucified Redeemer. And the 
doctrine of the personal advent of Christ is just 
the doctrine that has this tendency. The bare 
thought of a personal interview with Him whose 
love he has slighted and whose mercy he has 
spurned is, to a sinful man, terrible in the ex- 
treme. The thought that in an unprepared con- 
dition he must be brought before the great white 
throne of eternal justice is simply fearful. It is 
oppressive. It is impressive. It impresses one's 
mind with the sense of his own need, and he 
seeks for a way of escape. He finds it in the 
gospel. He finds it in Jesus. And, amazed at 
the mercy of God, and thankful for the Rock of 
refuge that has been provided, thither he flies with 



90 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

his guilt and his fear ; he has his sin forgiven and 
his fear pacified, and himself become a redeemed 
man, a child of God and an heir of glory. 

Then, once more, before we bring this chapter 
to a close, in regard to those who are saved, in 
whose hearts the sweet peace of God is abiding, 
whose lives are made hopeful by the blessings 
and promises of God, whose existence -is made 
calmly restful because of the continual spiritual 
presence of Jesus, whose hearts are set on His 
coming, and are patiently waiting for Him to 
appear, — in regard to them there is one other 
effect of which we would speak. And that is, 
the sweetness of glad anticipation, the joyfulness 
of fervent expectation, the real satisfaction there 
is in looking forward to that blest event, the 
pleasurable comfort one takes in contemplating 
the coming of his Redeemer, and in dwelling in 
imagination upon the ecstatic delights, the soul- 
ravishing blissfulness which then shall come to 
the sincere lovers of the blessed Jesus. 

How the hearts of some Christians burn within 
them as they meditate upon the joys of the future 
world ! How their hearts beat with rapture ! 
How their eyes glow with pleasure ! How their 
faith reaches out into coming time, and, in ad- 
vance, they enter into the spirit of the felicity of 
the kingdom of God. They can delight them- 
selves in the thought that He whom they love 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 91 

is coming, that then He will receive them unto 
himself, that in His holy presence they can 
ever be, in His joys they shall share, in the 
shining ranks of His ransomed ones they will 
stand, in the swelling song of redemption they 
will join, in the kingdom of heaven they shall 
eternally dwell. The present thoughts of these 
future joys till the mind of the Christian with the 
calm, flowing pleasures of a pleasing Hope. And 
well they may. 

The city child, confined in the narrow precincts 
of the crowded metropolis, shut in by its high 
walls, and stifled by its smoky atmosphere, looks 
forward with impatient delight to the prospect 
of a day's outing in the country, where, breath- 
ing its pure, bracing air ; basking in its bright, un- 
obscured sunshine ; and roaming its broad, flower- 
decked fields ; he can run and romp and revel to 
the content of his childish heart. The mere 
thought that he is to have such a picnic gives 
him delight. And thus, also, the child of God, 
who aspires to things high and noble and good, 
but who is here surrounded by sin, stifled by the 
impure atmosphere of an ungodly world, and 
cramped in his spiritual life by the unfitness of 
his invironment, looks hopefully forward to that 
blest time when, his Saviour coming, it will be 
his privilege to enter upon all the heavenly joys 



92 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

of Paradise. This very contemplation is a source 
of pure and present happiness. 

The true young woman, long separated from 
the one to whom her heart's full affection is given, 
to whom her hand is promised, and to whom at 
some time she expects to be united in the holy 
bonds of sacred matrimony; — she, with strangely 
beating heart, and strangely joyous feelings, is 
filled with pleasurable emotions as she thinks of 
the happy hour when the loved one shall return, 
and in each other's sweet society they shall be. 
And so the true Christian who, as a chaste vir- 
gin, is betrothed unto Christ, as his mind is 
occupied with the pleasing thoughts of his Lord's 
return, is oft times filled with emotions of ecstatic 
rapture. So we see that the doctrine of the com- 
ing of Jesus is a doctrine that has the effect of 
making happy the hearts and making hopeful 
and joyous the lives of those who believe it and 
are ready for it. They can look beyond the 
darkness of the present, and, by faith, can enjoy 
the brightness of the future. They can soar 
above the many vexations of life, and bathe 
themselves in the pure sunlight of future glory. 

In closing this chapter we can do so very 
appropriately in the following words of Dr. A. 
J. Gordon : M God's thoughts are not always 
our thoughts. He has made this Hope of Christ's 
return the supreme incentive to service and con- 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 93 

secration. . . . Up, therefore, Christian ! Trim 
your lamp ! Let its beams shine forth to meet 
and mingle with the first advancing rays of the 
bright and morning star! And let its light 
meantime show you the way to every path of self- 
denial, to every work of faithful service and 
testimony, and to every avenue of holiness and 
purity of life. Thus, with girded loins, with busy 
hands, with uplifted eyes, and with radiant faces, 
may you be ready to meet your descending Lord, 
and to exult in His glorious appearing, saying, 
1 Lo, this is our God ; we have waited for Him, 
and He will save us, this is the Lord ; we have 
waited for Him; we will be glad and rejoice in 
His salvation.' " 



94 THE CROWNING HOPE. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE BEALIZATION OF THE CROWNING HOPE. 

Transcendent morn ! when Christ shall come 

To call His people from the tomb ! 

Auspicious hour ! our hearts leap forth 

To meet the coming King of Earth, 

When He, with His seraphic train, 

Shall come to our world again. 

O blessed Bridegroom ! haste the time 

When Thou, in majesty sublime, 

Shalt come in glory from above 

To claim Thy waiting Bride of love. 

Well has the man of wisdom said that " Hope 
deferred maketh the heart sick." Many, even in 
the affairs of this life, have found this to be true. 
Many a heart has been sickened by the delay of 
some cherished object of expectation. When 
first they aspired to it they thought not that it 
was so far away. It was their thought to have 
obtained it long before they did. And so they 
have grown weary of long waiting, and of not 
receiving that which they have desired. And 
mayhap, they have become so completely dis- 
couraged as to have given up all hopes, and 
ceased all endeavors to attain to that which has 
been their heart's desire. But if with patience 
they have waited, and with industrious applica- 



THE CBOWNING HOPE. 95 

tion have set themselves to the task of forward- 
ing the object of their Hope, they may have 
reached at last the goal of their aspirations. 

If it be true that the deferring of the fading 
hopes of earth make the aspirant sick at heart, 
how much more is it true in regard to those 
whose Hope is set upon those eternal and heav- 
enly blessings which are to be realized at the ad- 
vent of the Messiah, The blessings of that 
august time are so much superior to the highest 
things of earth that it is not to be wondered at if 
the Christian looks earnestly forward to them, 
and with yearning heart longs for the time when 
they shall be received. The fulfilment of this 
great Hope has indeed been long deferred, and 
many hearts have felt sickness because of delay. 
When they had thought its accomplishment nigh 
at hand, yet it has been postponed. But, though 
wearily waiting, and though some of the hours 
may have dragged by with painful slowness, still 
has their trust remained firm. They know God 
will keep His word. And they are aware that 
His way is right, and that His time is best. 
Surely " at the time appointed 'the end shall be ;" 
and it is at God's appointed time that c ' He shall 
send Jesus Christ," and then shall occur the " res- 
titution of all things which God hath spoken.'' 
And though that time has been long in coming, 



96 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

yet it will come ; and, " when the desire cometh, 
it is a tree of life." 
Some can truly say : 

11 Long we've been waiting for Christ to come, 
Long we have watched for the morning ; 
Still for that happy, eternal home, 
The pilgrims are earnestly longing." 

And again with Bonar they can say : 

" The Church has waited long 
Her absent Lord to see ; 
And still in loneliness she waits, 
A friendless stranger she." 

But the Crowning Hope will not always be de- 
ferred. The great consummation will not for- 
ever linger. The fulfilment of our dearest 
hopes will not be eternally delayed. We shall 
not always be obliged to walk by faith. The 
heart will not always be sick at the delay of the 
fulfilment of her fondest longings. Jesus will 
come. And when He comes then shall the 
saints be satisfied in His presence, and in the 
joys He shall bring. So let us for a little while 
meditate upon the blessedness of the time when 
our Lord shall come and distribute His rewards. 

First — There is the beatitude of His sacred 
presence. O, how our pulses bound at the 
thought of His appearing ! How our hearts leap 
with exultation to think that He soon will come ! 
How our souls glow with rapture to know that 
they shall soon bathe themselves in the effulgence 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 97 

of His personal presence ! How our eyes beam 
with expectancy at the possibility of soon feast- 
ing their ravished gaze on the noble form of Him 
whom we adore ! How our very affections are 
softened and chastened at the Hope of soon enjoy- 
ing the society of Him whose love for us has been 
so great. He will come ! Surely, He will not 
delay ! His own heart yearns for His waiting 
Bride ! The time of union, " the marriage of the 
Lamb," must be near, when Jesus shall present 
the Church to himself, " a glorious Church, not 
having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing." 

What a time of felicity that will be ! What 
joy and rejoicing! What happiness of heart! 
What fullness of rapture ! How exceeding 
abundantly above all that we asked or thought. 
Though our expectations have often been kin- 
dled to the hottest flame, yet we looked not for 
such transcendent glory as this. 

To be with Jesus. O, soul-stirring thought I 
To be near His person and en j oy His society. Po- 
sition angels might envy ! The glorious Christ, 
the holy One of Israel, the eternal Son of God ; 
and we looking upon Him, and being with Him I 
What honor is this ! What bliss ! What com- 
pletion of happiness ! What perfection of felic- 
ity ! Truly, in His presence is fullness of joy, 
and at His right hand there are pleasures forev- 
ermore. He is greater than the great ones of 



98 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

the world. He is higher than the kings of the 
earth. And yet. He drives us not away from 
Him. He bids us welcome. He smiles upon us. 
He showers upon us His favors. 

O, the matchless grace of His person, and the 
divine splendor of His court ! O, the inexpres- 
sible grandeur that crowns His brow, and the 
halo of glory all around ! And we there to par- 
take of it, to drink it in, to gaze upon it, and to 
dwell in it. This surely is the height of bliss, 
the summit of rapture, the greatest favor and 
blessing possible to man. 

Then, again, when our Saviour comes there is 
the meeting of long separated friends. 

When the beloved head of a family has, for a 
long time, been away in a foreign land, and the 
patient wife and the affectionate children receive 
the welcome tidings that he is to return soon, 
how their faces lighten with joy and their hearts 
bound anew with pleasure. How they anticipate 
his return ! How they watch for his coming ! 
They may be disappointed by expecting him too 
soon ; but, with their loving hearts glowing with 
Hope, they do not cease to watch and to pray 
for his speedy arrival. And when at last, after 
many weary waitings and saddening disappoint- 
ments, they see in the distance his noble form 
approaching, how they rush out to meet him. 
How they cluster around him, and gaze into his 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 99 

face, and hold his hand, and listen to the music 
of his voice. If any are sleeping, or if any are 
busy about the necessary work, they are called 
to join in the general rejoicing. Husband has 
returned ! Father is home again ! And his 
presence gives happiness to all that family group. 
And thus will it be when our Saviour returns. 
What a reunion there then will be, a holy reun- 
ion of all the family of God. When the Head of 
the family comes the whole family will unite 
to meet Him and give to Him a grand reception. 
At present the flock is widely scattered. Myriads 
of the saints are calmly sleeping the sleep of 
death, waiting but for the blast of the Coming 
One's trumpet to call them from their dusty beds 
unto their heavenly home. Most assuredly 
"Our God shall come, and shall not keep silence. 
.... He shall call to the heavens from above, 
and to the earth, that He may judge His people. 
Gather my saints together unto meT " And then 
shall He send His angels, and shall gather to- 
gether His elect from the four winds, from the 
uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part 
of heaven." And Paul speaks of " the coming 
of our . Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering 
together unto Him" 

And so, we're looking forward to 
That morn of morns, when once again 
The Lord shall visit earth; and when 
With shout triumphant that shall loud 



100 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

Reverberate from hillside and 

From mountain top ; shall echo through 

The silent valleys ; sweep across 

The wide and treeless plains ; shall pierce 

Old Ocean's cozy caves remote,— 

Death's conqueror, the Prince of Life, 

In power back to earth shall come. 

Then, at that loud commanding voice, 

The sleeping ones, who have beneath 

The chilling turf been lying long, 

Shall feel the thrill of life return; 

And from the tomb shall upward rise. 

For grim and cruel Death can now 

No longer hold the pilgrim there ; 

But, with a shout both glad and long, 

The unwelcome coverlid of dust 

Aside is tossed ; the head from low 

And mouldy pillow now is raised ; 

And man from death does joyful spring. 

How vast the congregating throng 

The which does come,— from height and depth, 

From land and sea, from climate hot 

And climate cold,— and answer to 

The Master's call. They come ! They come ! 

In what tremendous troops they come ! 

By white robed angels guided on 

Unto the glorious meeting place. 

It shall be even as the Lord has said : " I will 
bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee 
from the west ; I will say to the north, Give up ; 
and to the south, Keep not back : bring my sons 
from far, and my daughters from the ends of the 
earth; even every one that is called by my 
name. "They shall come from the east, and 
from the west, and from the north, and from the 
south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of 
God." 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 101 

How many sad partings this world has wit- 
nessed. Many and cruel have been the separa- 
tions. Terrible, indeed, is the havoc that has 
been wrought by Death. Families have been 
divided, friends have been sundered and lovers 
have been torn apart. How heart-rending have 
been the scenes of sorrow on this account. No 
doubt the reader knows what this sorrow is. 
But it is comforting to know that, when Jesus 
comes, those who have loved Him will be gath- 
ered together in one eternally-united family. 

Not long since we met a Christian lady whose 
beautiful daughter had been cut down by Death's 
ruthless hand. The relations between mother 
and daughter had been especially happy. Not 
only had the young lady been a daughter, but 
she had been to her mother a confidante, a com- 
panion, a friend. She had been a most estima- 
ble young woman, intelligent, capable, pure of 
heart ; and, moreover, a true and faithful follow- 
er of the Lord Jesus. Her Saviour had been 
very dear to her, and in His service she had been 
unusually earnest and fervent. She loved the 
thought of His appearing. The Crowning 
Hope was her Hope. But the dark enemy, 
Death, had done his merciless work, and she had 
been taken from the active scenes of life. How 
keenly the affectionate mother felt the separa- 
tion. How crushing had been the blow, how 



102 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

cruel the sorrow, and how deep and continual 
the anguish of heart. Months had passed since 
that dread hour when Death had dared to invade 
the sacred precincts of that home ; and yet the 
grief was not assauged, the painful wound had 
not been healed. A settled sadness had come 
into that mother's life. But she is not " ignorant 
concerning them that are asleep," neither can 
she sorrow " even as others which have no 
Hope." She knows that her child "shall come 
again from the land of the enemy." She has the 
Hope of meeting again the one to her so dear. 
This glad reunion will take place at the return 
of the Redeemer. 

The fair-haired virgins, who went down 
In maiden-hood's young bloom ; the ones 
Who, pure and holy, kept themselves 
" Unspotted from the world," and, in 
A time of vile impurity, 
Their virtue still did keep intact- 
Do now come forth, arrayed in white 
Of spotless radiance, to meet 
The heavenly Bridegroom as He comes 
To call and claim His own. And now, 
With holy joy and rapture pure, 
They eagerly do greet the One 
So well beloved, and at His own 
Right hand, amidst the ransomed throng, 
Most willingly do take their glad 
And happy place. Their joy supreme 
They scarce contain ; for, bursting from 
Their welling hearts and flowing from 
Their tuneful lips, does come the song 
Of true acclaim, of praise to God 
And honor to the Lamb once slain. 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 103 

We ourselves have felt the pain caused by 
death. Among others dear to us we have a 
godly Father who has gone down to the grave. 
Sweetly in Jesus he is sleeping. His Hope was 
in the coming One. His heart loved the Saviour y 
and he hoped in His appearing. But, before the 
advent of his King, calmly did he fall asleep. 
He rests from his labors, and his works do follow 
him. In the bright morning he will not be for- 
gotten. His Lord will call, and he will answer. 
Forth from the tomb will he come. And then 
we shall meet again. O glory ! Hallelujah ! 
Praise God for such a Hope ! 

The grey -haired sire, who did well 
The day's fierce heat and burden hear, 
Who bravely fought the fight of faith, 
And through his Lord won victories ; 
Until at last— that darksome hour— 
When death's cold clutch did hold him fast 
And dissolution did its sway assert, — 
He now, from out the charnel-house, 
Does gladly come to meet his loved 
And glorious Friend. What joy supreme 
Does all his raptured being till, 
As, in His beauty, he beholds 
The King he long and well has served, 
And now rejoicing meets. 

As I write my eyes are blinded. The tears 
are falling. But though they are tears of sad- 
ness, yet are they tears of Hope. O, such a Hope 
is ours, this resurrection Hope; this Hope of 
again meeting, when the Saviour comes, those 



104 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

whom we well have loved. Hail ! thou auspi- 
cious morn, when the Resurrector shall appear ; 
when shall be heard His voice piercing the tomb. 
Hail ! thou glad time, when the Life-giver shall 
come ; ' when we shall meet the loved of earth 
and never part again.' 

When the long absent Christ returns and we 
have received our " eternal redemption," then no 
longer shall we, through fear of death, be all our 
life-time subject to bondage. The tyrant, Death, 
will be no more. Christ then shall have abolished 
death, which is the last enemy to be destroyed. 
Of death He will be the plague, and of the grave 
He will be the destruction. Death and the grave 
shall be cast into the lake of fire, and shall be 
utterly abolished. " He will swallow up death 
in victory ; and the Lord God shall wipe away 
tears from off all faces ; and the rebuke of His 
people shall He take away from off all the earth." 
Then, in joyous tones, the redeemed can cry 
out, " O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, 
where is thy victory ?" For " they which shall 
be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and 
the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, 
nor are given in marriage ; neither can they die 
any more? 

There will be no cemeteries in the kingdom of 
God. No tombstones to mark the resting-places 
of the dead. No coffins there! No sorrowful 



THE CROWNING HOPE. , 105 

gatherings to perform the last sad rites and pay 
the last tokens of respect and love to a shrouded 
form ! No preaching of funeral sermons ! No 
silent and solemn funeral cortege wending its 
mournful way to a place of burial ! No weeping 
at a yawning grave ! No heart-breaking scenes 
as the clods of earth hide from our view the 
casket that encloses the form of one beloved. 
For " there shall be no more death, neither sor- 
row, nor crying." 

And this brings us to another blesssd thought 
in connection with the second advent of Jesus. 
There is a reason why there shall be no more 
death. It is that all the saved ones shall become 
possessed of an endless life, shall be immortalized. 
We are at present living " in Hope of eternal 
life, which God who cannot lie, promised before 
times eternal." We now have " the promise of 
life which is in Christ Jesus." At present our 
" life is hid with Christ in God." But " when 
Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall 
we also appear with Him in glory." We have 
not in ourselves endlessness of life ; but, if we 
endure temptation, we shall, when the Prince of 
Life comes, " receive the crown of life which the 
Lord hath promised to them that love Him." 
We are dying creatures now, but then we shall 
be undying. We are mortal now, but at that 
time we shall be made immortal. That of us 



106 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

which is mortal shall be swallowed up of life. 
That of us which is corrupt shall be put beyond 
corruption. "We shall not all sleep, but we 
shall all be changed,. in a moment, in the twink- 
ling of an eye, at the last trump ; for the trumpet 
shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incor- 
ruptible, and we shall be changed. For this 
corruptible must put on incorruption, and this 
mortal must put on immortality" When the 
Saviour shall come from heaven, He "shall 
change our vile body, that it may be fashioned 
like unto His glorious body, according to the 
working whereby He is able even to subdue all 
things unto himself." 

And this again brings us to another sweet and 
inspiring thought. When the Son of righteous- 
ness shall arise with healing in His wings, and 
oar bodies are immortalized and spiritualized, 
we shall suffer no more the pangs of sickness 
and pain. And if this is not a welcome assur- 
ance then I know not what would be one. 

Ever since Adam and Eve were driven from 
the fair precincts of Eden's blest abode, bodily 
sickness and suffering has been the fearful lot 
of mankind. Malaria is in the air, and the germs 
of disease are hidden in the recesses of the 
body. Truly this earth has been one vast and 
perpetual hospital. 

O, the agony the human race has endured, the 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 107 

sickness with which it has languished, and the 
pain it has suffered ! Does not the spirit shrink, 
and the heart quail, at the thought? The long 
weary nights of restlessness, of tossings too and 
fro, of aching brows, of throbbing veins, of burn- 
ing fever, of wasting disease ! And the lingering 
days of illness, of bodily anguish, of acutest pain,, 
of excruciating agony ! The sighs half sup- 
pressed, the agonizing groans betokening deep- 
est distress, and the piercing shrieks of an agony 
too intense to be stifled ! The old man hobbling 
to the grave with his body racked and contorted 
by rheumatic pains, and the child in the cradle 
screaming in unrelieved anguish ! But let us 
not linger here. Let us drop the curtain on 
these scenes of human suffering and woe, and 
turn our attention to those brighter things of fu- 
turity. 

TThen the Divine Healer comes, what a change 
for the waiting Church of God. Then physical 
infirmity will go, and bodily pains be no more. 
"Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and 
the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then 
shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the 
tongue of the dumb shall sing," and in that land 
of constant bliss and of buoyant and unfailing 
health " the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick;" 
" neither shall there be any more pain, for the 
former things are passed away." 



108 THE CB OWNING HOPE. 

" The Saviour comes ! by ancient bards foretold : 
Hear Him, ye deaf, and all ye blind, behold ! 
He from thick films shall purge the visual ray, 
And on the sightless eyeball pour the day. 
Tis He tlr obstructed paths of sound shall clear, 
And bid new music charm th' unfolding ear ; 
The dumb shall sing ; the lame his crutch forego, 
And leap exulting, like a bounding roe. 
INo sigh, no murmur, the wide world shall hear, 
From every face He wipes off ev'ry tear."— Pope. 

Then, again, when Jesus comes, our sorrows 
will be banished. Our heart aches will go, and 
everlasting gladness be ours. No more sad 
hearts, no more depressed spirits, no more long 
and lonely hours of weeping ! " Weeping may 
endure for the night, but joy cometh in the 
morning." As the morning sun dispels the 
darkness of night, so, when the shining day-star 
shall shed His beams abroad, the gloom of our 
past shall be driven eternally away; and we 
shall go forth and gambol like calves let loose 
from the stall. 

David, in the Psalms, becomes so enthused at 
the inspiring thought of the Lord's coming that 
he calls upon the heavens to rejoice, the earth 
to be glad, and the sea to roar, in anticipation of 
so happy an event. He calls upon the fields 
and the hills to rejoice, and the very floods to 
clap their hands. 

And it will, indeed, be a time for the voice of 
rejoicing and salvation to be heard in the tab- 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 109 

ernacles of the righteous. The righteous can be 
glad. They can rejoice before God, yea, they 
can rejoice exceedingly. For it is then that 
"the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and 
come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy 
upon their heads ; they shall obtain joy and glad- 
ness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." 
" For ye shall go out with joy, and be lead forth 
with peace ; the mountains and the hills shall 
break forth before you into singing, and all the 
trees of the field shall clap their hands." Then 
can the redeemed ones shout in ecstacy ; " Sing, 
O, heavens; and be joyful, O, earth ; and break 
forth into singing, O, mountains ; for the Lord 
hath comforted His people." 

And now for a moment we would pause to 
think upon the place in which, when their re- 
demption comes, the perfected saints shall dwell. 
When they are made happy by so many bless- 
ings, rich and full, their joys should not be less- 
ened by having surroundings that are unworthy 
and mean . Neither will their joys be so lessened. 
The Lord will amply provide for them. Their 
environment will be commensurate to their con- 
dition and requirements. It will be magnificent 
indeed. 

Peter, after speaking of the dissolution of the 
elements and the burning of this old earth, says, 
"Nevertheless" (that is, notwithstanding the 



110 TEE CROWNING HOPE. 

earth and the elements have been dissolved and 
reduced to ashes) " we, according to His promise 
look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein 
dwelleth righteousness." Mr. Wesley, com- 
menting on the " new heavens and new earth " 
of this passage of Scripture, speaks of them as 
being " raised, as it were, out of the ashes of the 
old." Says Milton, 

"The world shall burn, and from her ashes spring 
New heavens and earth, wherein the just shall dwell. " 

Paul said that "the creation was subjected to 
vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him 
who subjected it, in Hope that the creation itself 
also shall be delivered from the bondage of cor- 
ruption into the liberty of the glory of the chil- 
dren of God." Now, as the children of God at 
the advent of Christ are to be changed from their 
corrupt condition to a state of perfection (as we 
have before shown), so the earth in which they 
have lived is to be delivered also and made glori- 
ous and fit for their occupancy. The earth was 
originally cursed when man was cursed. It was 
so cursed on account of man's sin. And so, 
when man is redeemed, the curse shall be lifted 
from the earth also, "by the man Christ Jesus, at 
His second advent. And so, looking forward 
to that time, we can say : 



THE CROWNING HOPE. Ill 

Beneath the curse of briers, weeds, and thorns, 
Of sorrow, sin, and death, the old earth long- 
Has lain. By many a pain she oft has been 
Convulsed, and many were her agonized 
Contortions ; but now, that Christ has come, they all 
Are o'er ; and quiet is the breast which oft 
So painfully did throb. Serenity 
And calmness now do reign, where all before 
Commotion was and wanton lack of peace. 
A change, how great ! o'er all the scene has come. 
No more does nature frown, but sweetly smiles 
And clothes herself with beauty unsurpassed 
And grand. The very air does seem to breathe 
Of harmony and love : while sweet upon 
Its perfumed breath delicious odors, such 
As tend to waft the happy soul into 
Elysian state, are freely onward borne 
In pleasing subtilty. The former curse 
Has been removed. No deserts now are seen; 
The wilderness is gone; and in their place 
The flowers bloom, and all is bright and fair. 

And these things shall be brought to pass 
when Jesus comes. Assuredly that will be a 
propitious season. Said Dean Alford : " The 
coming of the Bridegroom is the most joyous 
day for heaven and earthy the most joyous for 
the church, the most joyous for every faithful 
soul. All nature has been earnestly expecting it ; 
for then, first, shall the wilderness rejoice and 
blossom as the rose ; then none shall hurt or de- 
stroy, but the redeemed of the Lord shall come 
with songs, and everlasting joy upon their heads, 
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away." As 
the Lord said anciently, "Behold, I create new 
heavens and a new earth ; and the former shall 



112 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

not be remembered nor come into mind. But 
be ye glad and rejoice forever in that which I 
create ; for, behold, I create Jerusalem a rejoic- 
ing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in 
Jerusalem^ and joy in my people; and the voice 
of weeping shall be no more heard in her, 
nor the voice of crying." And John, in pro- 
phetic vision, saw the sacred city and the earth 
after it had been renewed. He said : " And I 
saw a new heaven and a new earth ; for the first 
heaven and the first earth were passed away ; 
and there was no more sea. And I John saw 
the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from 
God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned 
for her husband." 

" O, what a morn of glorious jubilee ! The 
heavens are clad in robes of beauteous col- 
ors ; the trees are dressed in splendor, and 
hang with fruits of golden joy ; the rivers in 
their joy leap on in triumph, while their roll- 
ing cascades send up to the ear of the uni- 
verse immortal melodies, and the birds sing in 
harmony with angelic notes. Then roll out and 
on and on, ye notes of victorious song, until the 
distant space of earth shall be filled with notes 
of praise ! Oh, what a morning of joy is before 
us ! Call ye the glory of old Sinai's mountain 
amid the smoking splendor beautiful when God 
by His angel talked with men? What then will 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 113 

ye call this glorious restitution morning, when 
the Son of man shall come down the parted 
skies with all the holy angels with Him? He 
will utter His voice and all the graveyards of 
earth will yield up the bodies of the righteous 
dead ; the sea too, will deliver up my Master' & 
treasures that are hidden there. Wonderful 
morn ! See ! Behold the army of God's elect ! 
They rise to meet the descending king, immortal 
now, with spiritual bodies like unto Christ's 
glorious body. Released from the law of gravi- 
tation, they bask amid the splendors of the uni- 
verse of God. Again the Lion of Judah cries, 
and the deserts of this sin-cursed earth rejoice, 
and bud and blossom as the rose. Behold, the 
curse departs, the earth becomes an Eden once 
again, and all God's creatures dwell together in 
lamb-like harmony. O, blessed will be our lot 
if we are found among the immortal host of God 
in that triumphant restitution morning ! — D* C+ 
Wheeler. 

And on this new earth sweet and clean, and 
under those new heavens clear and bright, the 
righteous, with their divine King, shall make 
their eternal abode. 

After touching eloquently upon the coming of 
the Lord and the renewal of the earth, M. R. 
Pheteplace cries out in rapturous tones : " The 
Almighty King sits upon His throne in splendor. 



114 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

Wave after wave of glory flashes far out over 
the plains of the redeemed earth. Jehovah's 
oath is fulfilled ; c As I live, saith the Lord, all 
the earth shall be filled with my glory.' No win- 
ter. No clouds. No night. No sickness. No 
pain. No tears. No death. No graveyards. 
No temptation. No sin. No partings. No 
time. What waving of palms ! What victory ! 
What praise ! What rest ! What glory ! Awake, 
O, morning of splendor ! and bring the promised 
deliverance." 

Then it is that we shall enter upon our heav- 
enly rest. How sweet it will be to partake of 
the enjoyment of that rest for which we oft have 
longed. O, how weary we have been in this 
toiling world. How many times have our poor 
tired brains refused to think. How our poor ex- 
hausted bodies have felt like dropping by the 
wayside. How worn out we have become with 
our toils and worries in a busy, heartless world. 
How we have longed for needed repose. And 
how many times have our lagging footsteps been 
hastened, and our very lives been invigorated by 
the Hope of the rest that remaineth for the peo- 
ple of God. And now it has come. O, rest, 
sweet rest! Now, surely, we "shall dwell in a 
peaceable habitation, and in sure dwellings, and 
in quiet resting places." Now we shall hunger 
no more, neither thirst any more. No longer 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 115 

will the scorching sun smite us, or the wintry 
blast chill us. Now we shall be led unto living 
fountains of water, and in the green pastures of 
glory we shall happily recline. 

Nearly two and a half centuries ago the saint- 
ly Richard Baxter, while meditating upon the 
" saint's everlasting rest," cried out in rapture : 
" O, blessed day ! When I shall rest with God ! 
When I shall rest in the bosom of my Lord ! 
When I shall rest in knowing, loving, rejoicing, 
and praising ! When my perfect soul and body 
shall together perfectly enjoy the most perfect 
God ! . . . How near is that most blessed, joyful 
day ! It comes apace. He that shall come, will 
come, and will not tarry. Though my Lord 
seems to delay His coming, yet a little while and 
He will be here. What is a few hundred years 
when they are over ? How surely will His sign 
appear ! How suddenly will he seize upon the 
careless world, even as the lightning cometh out 
of the east, and shineth unto the west ! He who 
is gone hence shall so come. Methinks I hear 
His trumpet sound ! Methinks I see Him com- 
ing with clouds and His attendant angels, in 
majesty and in glory." 

To those who are prepared for this great- 
est of all events, those who have accepted Christ 
as their Saviour, who have been cleansed in his 
blood, have followed in his footsteps, have denied 



116 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

self, have taken up the cross, and through evil as 
well as good report have still continued faithful, 
the coming of the Lord is that for which they 
most ardently long. It is the culmination of all 
their hopes, the consummation of all their desires. 
When the voice of Jesus, the Redeemer of the 
race, shall speak to them and say, " Come, ye 
blessed," what joy will fill their souls, what an 
entrancing thrill of exquisite bliss will permeate 
their entire being. How sweet will be that time, 
how ecstatic that occasion. Surely, "the suffer- 
ings of this present time are not worthy to be 
compared with the glory which shall then be 
revealed." 

THE COMING OF HIS FEET. 

In the crimson of the morning, in the whiteness of the noon, 

In the amber glory of the day's retreat, 
In the midnight, robed in darkness, or the gleaming of the 
moon," 

I listen for the coming of His feet. 

I heard his weary footsteps on the sands of Galilee, 
On the temple's marble pavement, on the street, 

Worn with weight of sorrow, faltering up the slopes of Calvary, 
The sorrow of the coming of His feet. 



Down the minster-aisles of splendor, from betwixt the cheru- 
bim, 
Through the wondering throng, with motion strong and fleet, 
Sounds His victor tread, approaching with a music far and 
dim— 
The music of the coming of His feet. 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 117 

Sandaled not with sheen of silver, girded not with woven gold, 
Weighted not with shimmering gems and odors sweet, 

But white-winged and shod with glory in the Taborlight of 
old— 
The glory of the coming of His feet. 

He is coming, O my spirit ! with his everlasting peace, 

With his blessedness immortal and complete, 
He is coming, O my spirit ! and his coming brings release, 

I listen for the coming of His feet. — Anon. 



118 THE CROWNING HOPE. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE DARK SIDE. 



; ' Ere long, and Jehovah will come in His power ; 
Our God will arise, with His foes to contend: 
Haste, haste thee, O sinner, prepare for that hour; 
The harvest is passing, the summer will end." 

Until now we have been looking at the better 
and the brighter side of that momentous event,, 
the Second Advent of Christ. We have been 
made happy by the thought of eternal blessed- 
ness that will then come to the weary, waiting 
" Church of the Firstborn." But we should be 
made aware that there is another and darker 
side to it. All are not Christians. Many have 
deliberately rejected all offers of mercy. They 
have bartered all their joyous Hope of a glad 
" world to come" for the fleshly indulgences and 
carnal pleasures of " this present evil world." 
" And, even as they did not like to retain God in 
their knowledge, God gave them over to a repro- 
bate mind." They will be wholly unprepared 
for the great day of God, totally unfitted to 
stand face to face with the Judge of all the 
earth. To them the coming of Jesus gives no 
Hope. Rather does it bring to them a depth of 
agonizing woe and of unutterable despair. To 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 119 

them " all joy is darkened, the mirth of the land 
is gone." The time of laughter now is passed. 
It is now God's time to laugh. And because He 
has called, and they have refused; because He 
has stretched out His hand, and no man re- 
garded ; because they have set at nought all His 
counsel, and would none of His reproof; — He 
also will laugh at their calamity, and will mock 
when their fear cometh ; when their fear cometh 
as desolation, and their destruction as a whirl- 
wind, when distress and anguish cometh upon 
them. In that great day " when God shall judge 
the secrets of men by Jesus Christ," God's ser- 
vants shall rejoice, but the wicked shall be 
ashamed : God's servants shall sing for joy of 
heart, but the wicked shall cry for sorrow of 
heart, and shall howl for vexation of spirit. 
" For behold, the Lord cometh out of His place 
to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their 
iniquity; the earth also shall disclose her blood, 
and shall no more cover her slain." 

Let us, for a little while, contemplate the sud- 
denness and fearfulness of the Advent as it re- 
gards the wicked. In doing so we first will 
quote an utterance of the Saviour. 

"For as the lightning cometh out of the east, 
and shineth even unto the toest, so shall also the 
coming of the Son of man beP 

Christ here uses the quickness and power of 



120 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

the lightning's flash as a figure of His own com- 
ing. No one would mistake the vivid electric 
glare for the feeble flickering of a weak candle. 
So, although some may be deceived by false 
Christs, yet when the great and only Judge of 
quick and dead does at last appear, no one, even 
for a moment, will mistake Him for some lesser 
would-be light. The greatness, the grandeur, 
the glory, the unsurpassed and unsurpassable 
magnificence of His personal presence will be 
adequate to impress upon all beholders the fact 
that He is Lord, 

How sublime is a thunder storm at night! 
How wonderful in its characteristics ; how awful 
in its gigantic display. At no other time do the 
clouds appear so black and dense. At no other 
time does the darkness seem so thick. The eye 
strives to pierce the black, impenetrable air, but 
all its efforts are in vain. Then suddenly comes 
the lightning flash. How instant the change, 
how sudden and complete the transformation ! 
Now to the east and to the west, even beyond 
the utmost range of our strained vision, the illu- 
mination extends. An entire change takes place 
in the aspect of things. Blackness flees, and 
darkness disappears. Light penetrates where a 
moment before all was obscured by deepest 
gloom. Objects far and near which before were 
invisible can now be plainly seen. 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 121 

It would seem as though the fearful magnifi- 
cence of such an occasion would bring to man 
a realizing sense of an overruling Power ; and, 
even though felt at no other time, would give 
solemn thoughts of a coming Lord and a near- 
ing judgment. Those lightning flashes, filling 
the whole heavens with a full flood of dazzling 
light, are enough to make one think of the 
future time, " wherein the heavens being on fire 
shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt 
with fervent heat." The alarming crash of the 
rolling, rumbling thunder is sufficient cause to 
startle one into taking a forward glance at that 
truly awful time " in the which the heavens shall 
pass away with a great noise." 

When Jesus comes, the night of sin and the 
gloom of the curse will be settling even blacker 
and thicker upon the earth. But from the clouds 
above a powerful light will suddenly burst. 
Wonderfully intense will be its brilliancy ! Re- 
markably penetrating its power ! Nothing is 
hidden which at that time shall not be revealed. 
The plans of men, their money-making schemes, 
their aspirations for earthly fame, their ambitions 
for worldly power, their heart-filth, their sinful 
indulgences, their rejections of Christ, their 
backslidings from God, all will be exposed. In 
the extremity of their terror men will cry to the 
mountains and rocks, " Fall on us, and hide us 



122 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

from the face of him that sitteth upon the throne, 
and from the wrath of the Lamb." But though 
they were to hide themselves beneath ten thous- 
and mountains, yet they would not be hidden 
from the piercing gaze of the Lord; for they 
would be discovered, and an irresistable power 
would bring them forth to judgment. 

The deepest den of vice will then be pene- 
trated by the light, and an almighty hand will 
remove all coverings and concealments. Those 
crimes which for so many years have been safely 
locked in the remote chambers of deceitful secre- 
cy, but which, nevertheless, have been a heavy 
load upon the conscience, will be open to the all- 
scrutinizing eye of the great Judge. Those sins 
in which people have secretly indulged, the 
knowledge of which they thought was securely 
hidden within the recesses of their own breast, 
will then be as manifest as the meridian sun in a 
cloudless sky. 

How terrible will be that time to some, when in 
ghastly hideousness their sins are all made bare. 
The meanness of their doings and the blackness 
of their hearts will be exposed by divine illumi- 
nation ; and the divine voice which says, " De- 
part, ye cursed," will rend their very souls and 
leave them without the slightest shadow of 
hope. 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 123 

"O! I shrink, 
My very soul doth shrink, when I reflect 
That the time hastens, when in vengeance clothed, 
Thou shalt come down to stamp the seal of fate 
On erring mortal man. Thy chariot wheels 
Then shall rebound to earth's remotest caves, 
And stormy Ocean from his bed shall start 
At the appalling summons. O ! how dread* 
On the dark eye of miserable man, 
Chasing his sins in secrecy and gloom, 
Will burst the effulgence of the opening Heaven; 
When to the brazen trumpet's deafening roar, 
Thou and thy dazzling cohorts shall descend, 
Proclaiming the fulfilment of the word ! 
The dead shall start astonished from their sleep ! 
The sepulchres shall groan and yield their prey; 
The bellowing floods shall disembogue their charge 

Of human victims They shall come 

To greet the solemn Advent of the Judge. 

Thou first shalt summon the elected saints 

To their apportioned Heaven ! and thy Son, 

At thy right hand, shall smile with conscious joy 

On all His past distresses, when for them 

He bore humanity's severest pangs. 

Then shalt thou seize the avenging scymitar, 

And, with a roar as loud and horrible 

As the stern earthquake's monitory voice, 

The wicked shall be driven to their abode, 

Down the immitigable gulf .— H. K. White. 

How awful will be that day to the wicked ! 
How dreadful and how terrible when the earth 
shall reel to and fro like a drunkard, when the 
heavens shall roll together like a gigantic scroll, 
when the thunders of eternity shall mightily re- 
verberate, and the very elements shall melt with 
fervency of heat. Of a sudden it will come upon 
a dreaming, unready world. Even as the wicked 



124 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

at the time of the deluge " knew not until the 
flood came, and took them all away," so an evil 
world will go to swift destruction at the coming 
of the Lord. And as " the same day that Lot 
went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone 
from heaven and destroyed them all ; even thus 
shall it be in the day when the Son of man is 
revealed." " Then shall he burst upon an apa- 
thetic and drowsy world with a grandeur sur- 
passing the brightness of suns, and with a footfall 
drowning the reverberation of thunder. He who 
once dawned on mankind as silently and gradu- 
ally as the morning, shall at last break forth as 
suddenly and swiftly as lightnings that gleam 
and flash from sky to sky." With what an 
agony of fear will the breasts of the wicked be 
filled on that dreadful day " when the Lord Jesus 
shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty 
angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them 
that know not God, and that obey not the gospel 
of our Lord Jesus Christ : who shall be punished 
with everlasting destruction from the presence 
of the Lord, and from the glory of His power." 
Surely to them ' that day is a day of wrath, a 
day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness 
and desolation, a day of darkness and gloomi- 
ness.' "And the loftiness of man shall be 
bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall 
be made low : and the Lord alone shall be ex- 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 125 

alted in that day. And they shall go into the 
holes of the rocks, and into the caves of the 
earth, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory 
of His majesty, when He ariseth to shake ter- 
ribly the earth." 

I trust that the words of this chapter shall not 
fall upon unheeding ears. Ifftthou, reader, art 
an unsaved person I pray they may burn a way 
into thy very heart, till thou shalt deeply real- 
ize that " the day of the Lord cometh, cruel both 
with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land des- 
olate ; and He shall destroy the sinners thereof 
out of it." May the Spirit of the Lord so trouble 
thee that thou mayest take no rest till thou art 
constrained to "flee from the wrath to come," 
and to "prepare to meet thy God." If Jesus 
comes and finds thee in thy sins, thou shalt be cut 
off forever from all Hope. The glad glories of 
eternity will not be thine to enjoy. When He 
comes those who are ready will go in, and the 
door will be shut. Then those who are without 
must remain without eternally. Dost thou 
desire to be one' of them? Shut out of the king- 
dom of God ! How awful ! Shut out from the 
bliss of that happy place ! Better for thee hadst 
thou never been born ! Shut out from the blest 
society of the saints and the Saviour ! O, how 
much thou hast lost! To take thy place with 
the " devil and his angels !" How wretched thy 



126 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

condition ! To go with them to the pit of de- 
struction ! How dreadful thy fate ! To be 
" destroyed," "burned up," to come " to nought;" 
to be cut off from joy and peace and Hope ; to be 
cut off from life itself ! How fearful thy end ! 

But it need not be so with thee. Thou 
mayest go to Jesus, and, casting thy poor, sinful, 
contrite self at His blessed feet, be received by 
Him, and in His precious blood have all thy sins 
washed away. And thus, being made free from 
sin, and living a life of holy purity, thou shalt 
have "boldness in the day of judgment;" thou 
mayest be presented " faultless before the pres- 
ence of His glory with exceeding joy." 

And now in closing this chapter I would tell 
of a dream I once had. It may impress others 
even as it impressed me. 

I dreamed that I was out of doors in the open 
country. Suddenly the thunder began to roll, 
and the lightning began to play. I, and those 
who were with me (for it seems that I was not 
alone), fearing that we were to have a thunder 
shower, started for the house in order that we 
might be sheltered. When we drew near to the 
house we noticed something in the yard that 
needed to be covered so that it might be pro- 
tected from the storm. So I began to cover it 
with a cloth that was lying there. While thus 
engaged I was startled by hearing shrieks of 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 127 

fright and the agonized cries of those who were 
greatly terrified. And then, for the first time, 
I noticed that the thunder was not ordinary 
thunder, and the lightning was not ordinary 
lightning. It sounded as though the whole sky 
were cracking and breaking ; and the light did 
not come in intermittent flashes, but was con- 
tinuous. Then I heard someone say, in a tone of 
awe, "It is the judgment." A sudden terror 
seized me. I was taken with the fearful fright 
that was being expressed by the outcries of oth- 
ers. What a solemn awe came over me ! What 
a feeling, from head to foot, of inexpressible 
agony ! What an anguish in my heart ! I was 
overcome, petrified! 

Then a thought seemed to come to me. And 
with the thought came peace. The fear disap- 
peared, and in its place came quietness of mind. 
A calmness, as great as before had been the ter- 
ror, now took possession of me. I lifted my 
calm face to the heavens. They were all cracked 
open. Great seams and rents were running 
through them in all directions. They were still 
parting asunder, and were aglow with a many- 
colored light. Behind those heavens I certainly 
thought was the Son of God coming to judge 
the world. Yet in that moment of terror, with 
uplifted head and with calm assurance, I simply 
said, "Dear Jesus, I am thine." 



128 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

This is the dream. And now that I have relat- 
ed the dream, I will bring to your notice some 
things that are taught in God's Word. 

I read that " the day of the Lord will come as 
a thief in the night." Now, then, how does a 
thief come ? Unexpectedly. So also will come 
the day of the Lord ; when people are busy with 
other matters, or, perhaps, when they are sleep- 
ing. Yes, u when they say, Peace and safety ; 
then sudden destruction cometh upon them." 

I find out that the heavens " shall perish ; " 
that they all shall wax old as doth a garment ; 
and as a vesture shalt Thou [Christ] fold them 
up, and they shalt be changed." " The heavens 
and the earth . . . are kept in store, reserved un- 
to fire against the clay of judgment and perdition 
of ungodly men." "The heavens shall vanish 
away like smoke." "The heavens shall pass 
away with a great noise?' 

John, the disciple dearly beloved, he who, at 
the Last Supper, had the ineffable joy of reclin- 
ing his head upon the Saviour's breast, was given, 
in his old age, a view of things that were fut- 
ure. And among other things that were passed 
in surprising vision before him he " saw a great 
white throne, and Him that sat on it, from whose 
face the earth and the heaven fled away; and 
there was found no place for them." 

The day of the Lord most surely is coming. 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 12& 

The Son of God is to return to this earth. " The 
Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a 
shout." " It is He [Jesus] which was ordained 
of God to be the Judge of the quick and dead.' T 
He shall judge them "at His appearing." 

When He comes to '< judge the world with 
righteousness," He will come in the clouds. 
" For behold, He cometh with clouds, and every 
eye shall see Him." He will come like the light- 
ning. " For as the lightning cometh out of the 
east, and shineth even unto the west ; so shall 
also the coming of the Son of Man be." 

In that awful day " when the Son of Man shall 
come in His glory, and all the holy angels with 
Him ;" when " He shall sit upon the throne of 
His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all 
nations ; " when " He shall separate them one 
from another as a shepherd divideth his sheep 
from the goats," — how, O, reader, will you stand ? 
When " the great day of His wrath is come, who 
shall be able to stand ? " 

When the thunders of judgment are rolling, 
when " the heavens pass away with a great noise," 
when the sky is aglow with the glory of His 
presence; O, reader, how then will you feel? 
Will you be able to endure the test ? Will you 
then be able to do in reality what I did in my 
dream ? Can you then, in that time of terror, 
in that day of troubled minds, in that day of 



130 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

anguished hearts ; can you, O, can you lift up 
your face to the rending skies and toward the 
coming Judge, and say, with sweet assurance 
and with joy supreme, " Dear Jesus, I am thine ?" 
If in that day you are His, all is well. If not 
His, O how terrible it will be ! 

Dear sinner friend, dear unsaved one, you are 
unready for that day. But why not get ready? 
The hand of mercy is extended to you. The 
dear Saviour wants to be your Saviour. Today 
He speaks to you the warning word. Will you 
not hear it? Even now he reaches to you His 
helping hand. Will you not grasp it? O, take 
hold of Him by faith. Flee to Him with your 
sin and guilt. Tell Him all about it. Confess it 
to Him. Ask Him for pardon, for peace. Cast 
yourself upon His mercy. Give yourself entire- 
ly to Him. Leave behind you your sins and 
your evil habits. Obey Him, live for Him. 
And then, " when He shall appear, you may 
have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him 
at His coming." Tou will be able to look up 
and say, " Dear Jesus, I am thine." 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 131 



CHAPTER VII. 

CONDITION OF THE WORLD BEFORE THE ADVENT. 

" When the wicked are multiplied, transgression increaseth ; 
"but the righteous shall see their fall." Prov. 29 : 16. 

"When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the 
earth?" Luke 18: 8. 

The Lord Jesus is coming. There can be no 
doubt of it. We know not when the time shall 
be ; but the question often arises, What will be 
the condition of the world when the Saviour 
comes in judgment ? or rather, what will be its 
condition just prior to that event? Will the 
world increase in peace, in purity, in happiness ; 
or will its course be a downward one ? Will 
the world become better? or will it become more 
sinful, more corrupt, more defiant in its wicked- 
ness? Will the world be converted to God be- 
fore Jesus comes? or will people depart from 
the true faith and become more infidel, more 
skeptical? Will the Church gain a complete vic- 
tory over the world? or will the world assert a 
power of attraction over the Church that will 
have the tendency to drag the Church down to 
the world's level ? Will the nominal Church be- 
come purer and more spiritual as time pro- 
gresses? or will she leave her first love and join 



132 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

in gay flirtation with the world? In fine, will 
the world as a whole become better or worse 
before the Advent of Christ? 

This is a queer world. It is filled with peo- 
ple who are peculiar, and with ideas that are 
even more so. There are many things that sur- 
prise us, and many also that cause us grief. And 
among other things that surprise us is this : that 
ministers of the gospel, who ought to know bet- 
ter, will preach for gospel truth that the world 
is improving morally ; and that, as time contin- 
ues, it will increase in righteousness yet more. 
Another thing that surprises us is that people, 
notwithstanding the evidences of Scripture, of 
statistics, and of their own senses, will believe it 
to be so. 

It is not pleasant to think that, while the 
world is making such amazing progress in so 
many departments, — in scientific discovery, in 
general knowledge, in educational facilities, in 
manufacturing ability, in modes of travel and 
transit, etc. — it is not pleasant to think that 
morally the race is not advancing. We do not 
revel in the thought. It is not of the kind to in- 
spire joyous emotions. To know it is sad in 
the extreme. But know it we must; not be- 
cause we desire it to be so, but because it is so. 
It is a fact, and if it is a fact we ought to know 
it ; and knowing it, we should acknowledge it* 



THE CB OWNING HOPE. 133 

We should not, simply because it is unpleasant, 
thrust it from us. It were cowardly so to do. 
But if it be true we should face it, and not turn 
our backs to it. We must confront it like true 
men. 

It is not surprising to us that the world is not 
becoming better. But it is surprising that peo- 
ple should be so deceived as to think that, in this 
direction, great improvement were being made ; 
that people should think that men are nobler 
and more honorable ; that women are purer and 
more modest ; that children are better behaved, 
and more respectful to their parents and to the 
aged. 

We are not surprised, I say, that the world is 
growing more corrupt. Indeed we should be 
surprised if it were not so. The great God, who 
" knew the end from the beginning," who could 
see beforehand what course sinful men would 
pursue when allowed to follow their oion incli- 
nations^ has told us in His prophetic word to ex- 
pect such things as we see and know. So it 
does not astonish us to see that condition of af- 
fairs come to pass which God's word teaches us 
to expect. God has told us in advance many 
things that would take place in the heavens and 
on the earth. Many of these things have already 
had their fulfilment, and in just the manner as 
was predicted. God's prophecies are true. And 



134 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

as it was foretold that " wicked men and sedu- 
cers shall wax worse and worse " in the " last 
days," the condition of the world and the wick- 
edness of man is what we are to expect. It is 
our intention, therefore, to show what is the true 
condition of things. In doing so we may be 
obliged to disagree with opinions which, by some, 
may have been held for a long time. But we 
trust that, with carefulness and candor, you will 
consider what is here set forth ; that you will 
not allow notions previously held to block the 
way of truths, and that prejudice may not be 
permitted to blind the eyes of your mind. 
" Truth shines more clearly when closely tested ; 
and, as error is of no value, it should be pointed 
out and discarded. This is a part of Christian 
duty." 

I desire to show, first, what is taught by the 
the Word of God. I have profound respect for 
the Bible. To me what the Bible teaches is " an 
end of all strife." I bow humbly to its doc- 
trines, and meekly submit to its teachings. Are 
you ready to do the same ? 

Does the Bible teach that the world is to grow 
better as time progresses? Does it teach that 
great moral improvement is to take place as we 
draw near to the end of the gospel dispensation ; 
near to the close of this world's history ; near to 
the time when the Son of God shall return from 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 135 

heaven? No, it does not! Men teach it, I 
know. But men have been mistaken before ; 
and there are many who, on this subject, are 
mistaken now. Men may preach that the world 
is to become better, but they preach wrong. 
That is their idea, and not a Bible doctrine. 
Many appear to have an idea that before Jesus 
comes the world is to be converted, but we have 
seen nothing in the Bible to warrant such a con- 
clusion, while we have seen much to warrant an 
opposite view. 

What, allow me to ask, was the condition of 
the world just prior to the Flood? Did the 
world then possess a high moral tone? Was 
uprightness, integrity, and purity, the order of 
the day? Had the world, from the time that 
Adam and Eve were driven from Eden, made 
great progression morally ? We trow not. The 
people had gone downward rather than upward. 
They had become worse rather than better. 
They were lower rather than higher, more de- 
based and bestial rather than more refined and 
spiritual. Instead of being nearer to God, they 
had widened the distance between themselves 
and Deity. They had become so excessively 
vile that God would not allow them to wallow 
any longer in the filthiness of their own corrup- 
tion. And it was for this reason that they were 
blotted out by the destroying deluge. 



136 TEE CROWNING HOPE. 

What saith the Scripture as to their condi- 
tion ? " And God saw that the wickedness of 
man was great in the earth, and that every imag- 
ination of the thought of his heart was only evil 
continually." Not only were they outwardly 
lawless, but their inward part was very wicked- 
ness. So exceedingly vile where they that " it 
repented the Lord that He had made man on 
the earth, and it grieved Him at His heart." 
u The earth also was corrupt before God, and 
the earth was filled with violence. And God 
looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was cor- 
rupt ; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon 
the earth."' So we can easily see from the Bible 
what was the state of the people at that time, 
and what was their standing before God. But 
what has that to do with us, and with our times ? 
It has much to do, as it shows us what to expect. 
It is said that " history repeats itself." This is 
especially true of the history of wickedness. 

Let us see what the Saviour said about it. In 
Luke 17 : 26, we read : " And as it came to pass 
in the days of Noah, even so shall it be also in 
the days of the Son of man." These are the 
words of Jesus. Our salvation depends upon 
our belief in Him. We must, therefore, believe 
what He says. And He does not here teach 
that, before His second appearing, the state of 
the world is to be greatly improved. He teaches 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 137 

the exact opposite. In the days before the flood 
the people did not give heed to the voice of 
Noah, who was " a preacher of righteousness," 
but, unheedful of the admonitions of warning, 
they went on in their own ways. They were 
eating and drinking, feasting and frolicking, 
marrying and giving in marriage, sinning and 
refusing to obey God ; and destruction came sud- 
denly upon them. " They knew not until the 
flood came, and took them all away. So shall 
the coming of the Son of man beP The people 
will not be living righteously and be joyously 
awaiting His appearing ; but, unmindful of warn- 
ings, will be living in their sins, and so shall 
" that day come upon them unawares." If it 
was very wicked in the days of Noah, and is to 
be in Christ's day as it was then, it surely will be 
very wicked when our Lord shall return. If we 
believe what Jesus has said, there is no escaping 
this conclusion. It is inevitable. This doesn't 
look like the conversion of the world, does it ? 

What was the condition of Sodom and of 
Gomorrah before their fiery judgment ? " Their 
sin was very great." They were " giving them- 
selves over to fornication, and going after strange 
flesh." "Pride, and fullness of bread, and abun- 
dance of idleness, was in her (Sodom) and in her 
daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand 
of the poor and needy." " They were haughty, 



138 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

and committed abomination " before the Lord. 
So abominably low had they become in their 
morals (and yet how high they were in their 
haughty self-conceit) that Lot, " that righteous 
man dwelling among them, in seeing and hear- 
ing, vexed his righteous soul from day to day 
with their unlawful deeds.' 9 ' " The men of Sod- 
om were wicked and sinners before the Lord 
exceedingly." 

So will it be when the Lord comes to judge 
the world. Some, because of their righteous- 
ness, will be prepared. But the majority will be 
vile, impure, sinning against God with a high 
hand; and, at the same time, will be proud, 
haughty, lifted up, self-conceited, self-righteous, 
self-sufficient; and, as a consequence, all un- 
ready. So accustomed are they to go on in their 
sins unreproved that they fondly imagine they 
are all right. But the truth is, they are all wrong. 
O, may those whose duty it is to preach the word 
of God awaken to the fact of their responsibility, 
and " resprove, rebuke, exhort, with all long- 
suffering and doctrine." " Cry aloud, spare not, 
lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and show my 
people their transgressions, and the house of 
Jacob their sins." 

In Timothy 4: 1, we read; "Now the Spirit 
speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some 
shall depart from the faith, giving heed to sedu- 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 139 

ring spirits and doctrines of devils." This scrip- 
ture may not shadow forth the very "last days," 
but it does speak of the "latter times." It 
means times later than when it was written, in 
days which to Paul were future, in times subse- 
quent to his time. And it shows a departure 
from the true faith rather than obedience to it. 
" Some shall depart from the faith." " For the 
time will come when they will not endure sound 
doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they 
heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears ; 
and they shall turn away their ears from the 
truth, and shall be turned unto fables. " (2 Tim. 
4 : 3-4). This doesn't look^as if such great ad- 
vancement were expected to be made along the 
line of true gospel salvation, that, in course of 
time, the world would be converted. When 
people "give heed to seducing spirits and 
doctrines of devils," we cannot confidently ex- 
pect much of an improvement. When Spirit- 
ism and Devilism abound, we cannot look for 
advancement in righteousness under it. 

Again the Scriptures teach us by Peter, that 
" there shall come in the last days scoffers, 
walking after their own lusts." Now a scoffer 
is not a true Christian surely, and. those who 
walk after their own lusts are not likely to be very 
holy men. " To walk after one's own lusts, is to 
be thoroughly selfish — to gratify the natural 



140 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

passions, lusts and appetites, which the coming 
of a retributive judgment would suddenly stop 
and punish. This does not look as if great 
moral progress were expected, but rather the 
other extreme. 

And the Saviour himself tells us that " be- 
cause iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall 
wax cold." Iniquity shall abound] not grow 
less and less as we might wish, but be on every 
side, among all grades of society, in the world 
and in the Church. It " shall abound," become 
more abundant, so much so that the love which 
many had for God will grow cold ; they will 
turn away in their hearts and in their lives; 
they will mingle in the iniquity and frivolity of 
the worldly ones, instead of loving the Lord 
with all their hearts, and being a people separate 
from sin, a "peculiar people, zealous of good 
works." They will be in the condition of the 
Church of Laodicea, as recorded in Rev. 3d chap. 
" I know thy works, that thou art neither cold 
nor hot : I would thou wert cold or hot. So 
then, because thou art lukewarm, and neither 
cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." 

c< Iniquity shall abound ; " not be something 
that is comparatively scarce ; not something that 
is practiced by the exceptional few ; not be the 
exception, but rather the rule. It shall " abound." 
It will be very plenteous. There will not be a 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 141 

famine of iniquity, but there will be a great crop ; 
the harvest will be abundant. It will bring forth 
largely, and be greatly multiplied. It shall 
" abound ; " not die out, and become extinct ; but 
it shall be very prolific, and shall increase great- 
ly. The " tares " will grow until the harvest, 
and the harvest is not to be until " the end of the 
world." And, until then, we may anticipate 
that " iniquity shall abound," and all the more so 
the nearer we get to the end. 

And again we turn to the Book of inspiration, 
and find these words recorded : " But know 
this, that in the last days grievous times shall 
come. For men shall be lovers of self, lovers of 
money, boastful, haughty, railers, disobedient to 
parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural af- 
fection, implacable, slanderers, without self-con- 
trol, fierce, no lovers of good, traitors, head- 
strong, puffed-up, lovers of pleasure rather than 
lovers of God ; holding a form of godliness, but 
having denied the power thereof; from these 
also turn away." (2 Tim. 3 : 1-5. R. V). 

* O, what a catalogue of evil ! What is the world 
coming to ? And yet this is what we are to ex- 
pect. We are not told to surmise this, or to 
suppose it ; we are told to " know " it. And 
what we know from God's word we do not have 
to guess it. We are not to build up opposing 
theories because to us they might be more pleas- 



142 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

ing ; but, as Christians, we are to receive our in- 
structions from the Bible. And we are not there 
informed that the world is to grow better and 
better, but we are told that " evil men and se- 
ducers shall wax worse and woese, deceiving and 
being deceived." (2 Tim. 3 : 13.) 

If there were in the Bible nothing bearing on 
this subject save that chapter from which we 
have last quoted, it seems as if that would be 
sufficient to convince anyone who is not of a 
skeptical turn of mind. But, of course, if 
people are skeptical, if they do not believe the 
revelation that God has given, it makes no differ- 
ence how many Scriptures may teach a certain 
thing ; they will not believe. But of those who 
believe the Bible, and who accept it as a teacher 
of doctrine, we expect better things. It is ex- 
pected of them to bow in deference to what God 
has caused to be written, whether it has been 
repeated time and again, or whether it has 
been given but once. To such as prefer 
God's truth to the ideas of men, then this one 
chapter which so plainly and so unmistakably 
sets forth what the condition of the world is to 
be, and when it also settles it chronologically, by 
saying that it is to be in the "last days," this one 
chapter would be sufficient. And so ought it to 
be. But when we do not depend upon one por- 
tion of the Bible alone, but have " precept upon 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 143 

precept, line upon line, here a little and there a 
little," the most skeptical ought to be convinced. 

Much more Scriptute could be brought, but 
we forbear. We have used sufficient to show 
conclusively that we are to look for a worse 
state of things rather than a better ; that al- 
though men may improve educationally, etc., 
yet, so far as their moral condition is concerned, 
there is to be no such improvement. 

And right here allow me to quote from the 
" Teaching of the Twelve Apostles." I do not 
quote it as having the authority of Scripture, 
but as that which may have its appropriate 
weight. " For in the last days false prophets 
and corrupters shall be multiplied, and the sheep 
shall be turned into wolves, and love shall t)e 
turned into hate ; for as lawlessness waxeth, men 
will hate one another, persecute and betray, and 
then will appear the world-seducer, like the Son 
of God, and he will do signs and miracles, and the 
earth will be given into his hands, and he will 
do iniquities that have never been done from the 
beginning. Then the human creation shall come 
into the firing of trial, and many shall be made 
to stumble and shall perish, but they that abide 
in their faith shall be saved from this curse." 

WHAT OTHERS SAY. 

We have shown from the Scripture what 
course the world is traveling. We have shown 



144 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

what will be the tendency of the times in the 
"last days," the days immediately preceding the 
coming of Christ. We have shown that we need 
not look for the conversion* of the world, need 
not look for it to become better, but rather that 
its moral progress is downward. And now we 
purpose to give the opinions of others, those 
whose words are more weighty than ours ; those 
who are students of the Holy Bible, and who 
themselves are holy men. Give heed to what 
they say. Let us learn of them. 

H. L. Hastings, in " Important Truths/ 5 lays 
down this proposition : " This world will never 
be converted to God by the preaching of the gos- 
pel, but will continue perverse and ungodly, per- 
secuting the people of God till Christ shall come 
again the second time." He first supports this 
by Scripture, and then gives the following : 

"Proof from the faith of the church. 
Sennas says : " This world is as the winter to 
the righteous men, because they are not known, 
but dwell among sinners ; but the world to come 
is as summer to them." Justin Martyr, A. D. 
150, said: "The princes of this world . . . will 
not cease from killing and persecuting those that 
call on the name of Christ, till He shall come 
again, and destroy them all, and render to every 
man according to his deserts." Tertidlian says : 
"Truth wonders not at her own condition. 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 145 

She knows that she is a sojourner upon earth ; 
that she must find enemies among strangers^ 
that her origin, her home, her hopes, her dignities, 
are placed in heaven." Said Chrysostom : 
" The gospel of the kingdom shall be preached 
in all the world for a witness unto all nations, 
and then shall the end come. Attend with care 
to what is said. He said not when it hath been 
believed by all men, but when it hath been 
preached to all. For this cause He also said : 
'for a witness to the nations,' to show that He 
doth not wait for all men to believe, and then 
for Him to come; since the phrase, 'for a wit- 
ness ' hath this meaning, — for accusation, for re- 
proof, for condemnation of them that have not 
believed." Calvin, on Matt. 24: 30, says: 
"There is no reason why any person should ex- 
pect the conversion of the world, for at length 
(when it will be too late and will yield them no 
advantage) they shall look on Him whom they 
have pierced." Luther, on John 10 : 11-16> 
says : " Some in explaining this passage say, 
that before the latter days all the world shall be- 
come Christains. This is a falsehood forged by 
Satan, that he might darken sound doctrine, that 
we might not rightly understand it. Beware, 
therefore, of this delusion." Said Zwingli: 
" We cannot make a heaven upon earth, — and 
Christ has taught us that we must let the tares 



146 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

grow up along with the wheat." David Par- 
ens, 1590, said; "It is a thing never to be looked 
for, that the whole earth shall become Chris - 
tain ; since the enemies of the church, together 
with Antichrist, shall not cease but at the last 
coming of Christ." John Knox, A. D. 1550, 
speaks of Christ's coming, " to reform the face 
of the whole earth, which never was, nor yet 
shall be, till that righteous King and Judge ap- 
pear for the restoration of all things." 

Says C. U. Spurgeon: "Everything is heaving, 
and tossing, and yeasting. The world is like the 
troubled sea which cannot rest; its waters cast 
up mire and dirt. ... In the long run truth 
will prevail. And yet it strikes the thoughtful 
observer that the coming of the Lord Jesus is 
far more the Hope of the church than any rem- 
edial processes, or evolutions, or progresses 
among mankind. Under some aspects the world 
grows better, but in the deepest and most sol- 
emn sense, evil men and seducers ' wax worse 
and worse.' " 

And next we will hear from the great evange- 
list, D. L. Moody. He needs no introduction. He 
is well and widely known. God has wonderfully 
used him. Let him be again used here. He 
says : " A great many say : ( This doctrine of 
the second coming of Christ cannot affect me. 
He can't come in my day. A great many things 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 147 

have got to take place before he comes. The 
thousand years of the millennium have got to 
come before he does.' That is just the way I 
used to talk. ' Why,' I used to say, ' He can't 
come in my day. Don't you know that there 
is to be one thousand years of the millennium ; 
that righteousness must increase and wickedness 
must decrease before he comes?' Ah, my 
friends, but since I have got a little better ac- 
quainted with the Word of God, I find that is 
not God's plan : that is not what is taught here. 
Why, just see what he says : c This know also, 
that in the last days perilous times shall come.' 
That doesn't sound like the millennium, does it? 
'For men shall be lovers of their own selves, 
covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedi- 
ent to parents, unthankful, unholy.' c Boasters.' 
There is some boasting done here in Boston. 
4 Without natural affection, truce-breakers, false 
accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those 
that are good. Traitors, heady, high-minded, 
lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.' I 
think we are coming pretty near those days now. 
.... The fact is, my friends, the world is going 
to destruction ; and what God wants is to have 
us come out from it." 

And again he says : " Some people say, ' I 
believe Christ will come on the other side of the 
millennium.' Where do you get it? I cannot find 



14S THE CROWNING HOPE. 

it. The word of God nowhere tells me to watch 
and wait for the coming of the millennium, but 
for the coming of the Lord. I do not find any 
place where God says the world is to grow better 
and better, and that Christ is to have a spiritual 
reign on the earth of a thousand years. I find 
that the world is to grow worse and worse, and 
at length there is to be a separation. Two 
women grinding at a mill, one taken and the 
other left; two men in one bed, one taken and 
the other left. (Luke 17 : 34, 36.)" And again, 
" just as judgment overtook Belshazzar carous- 
ing at his feast, so will judgment come suddenly 
and swiftly upon the world revelling in its sins" 
Next we give the words of Geo. Miiller, of 
Bristol, Eng. He says : u During the present 
dispensation, before the return of our Lord, 
Satan will not be bound : therefore sin and open 
wickedness will continue to the end of it ; and 
instead of becoming better, things according to 
Scripture, will become worse and worse. It is 
impossible to shut one's eyes to the fearful wick- 
edness now around us everywhere; for murders 
of the most cruel character, and numerous other 
atrocious crimes are, even in this enlightened 
nineteenth century, continually being committed." 
And during the same discourse he said : " Are 
we, then, to expect things around us will grad- 
ually improve, or rather, that as we approach 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 149 

the end of the age the darker they will become ? 
True it is that one day, ' The earth will be filled 
with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters 
cover the sea ; " but this will never be until Jesus 
himself comes. In the meantime lawlessness will 
increase." 

Eld. E. A. Stockman, the able editor of the 
World's Crisis, is a man of comprehensive abil- 
ity. His opinion on this subject will be of value. 
The following is from his pen : " The uniform 
statement of the Bible is that the world will be 
fearfully wicked at the time of Christ's coming. 

c And He said : Go thy way, Daniel, for the 
words are closed up and sealed till the time of 
the end. Many shall be purified, and made 
white, and tried ; but the wicked shall do wick- 
edly ; and none of the wicked shall understand ; 
but the wise shall understand.' (Daniel 12: 9, 
10.) This text occurs at the close of the pro- 
phecy of Daniel, which runs down to the end of 
time, and describes most clearly the condition 
of society just previous to our Lord's appearing. 
1 But evil men and seducers shall wax worse 
and worse, deceiving and being deceived.' 
(2 Timothy 3:13.) This text precludes the idea 
so popular, that the world is growing better, or 
that it ever will be any better. It positively 
asserts that wicked men will become more and 
more wicked as we near the end. And this is 



150 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

the teaching of the whole Bible on this subject. 
' Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of 
the sea ! for the devil is come down unto you, 
having great wrath, because he knoweth that he 
hath but a short time.' (Rev. 12 : 12.) The 
devil's reign being limited to the period of pro- 
bation, as he sees the final hour approaching he 
will exert all his wonderful skill to the utmost. 
This will be seen in the unparalleled wickedness of 
men. Carnal human nature will be set on fire by 
Satan for the perpetration of the most revolting 
abominations and wickedness. c By swearing, 
and lying, and killing, and stealing, and commit- 
ting adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth 
blood. Therefore shall the land mourn, and 
every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, 
with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of 
heaven ; yea, the fishes of the sea shall also be 
taken away.' (Hosea4:2, 3.) This is a pro- 
phetic view of the culmination of human wick- 
edness just prior to the opening of God's terrible 
judgment day. One would think that Hosea 
must have uttered these words from the centre of 
some of our modern cities. ' But as the days of 
Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of 
man be. For as in the days that were before 
the flood they were eating and drinking, marry- 
ing and giving in marriage, until the day that 
Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 151 

flood came and took them all away ; so shall also 
the coming of the Son of man be.' (Matt. 
24 : 37-39.) These are the Saviour's own words, 
who saw the end from the beginning. The state- 
ment of this text is, that as great and terrible 
wickedness prevailed just before the old world 
was destroyed by water, so will great wicked- 
ness prevail just before the present world will be 
destroyed by fire.'' 

From the Hoston Herald of December 1, 1890, 
I clip the following, it being from a condensed 
report of a sermon by Fr. Ignatius. " There are 
two things that are given as signs of Christ's 
second coming, and when we observe them we 
must be on the alert. 'One is that wicked 
men should wax noisier, atheism should be en- 
throned, and the nations disturbed by wars and 
rumors of wars. The other indication is the 
doctrine of the true religion. Christianity shall 
fade out like a dissolving view; worship shall 
have the form, but lack the essence of godliness. 
As we see in the arming of the nations of the 
earth, in the revolution of religious thought, in 
the wickedness of the times, indications that the 
time of Christ's coming may be near, it is our 
duty as Christians to look and prepare for His 
appearing." 

From the ready pen of that thoughtful scholar, 
D. T. Taylor, we get these words : " The moral 



152 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

course of the age is set forth as evil; it is a 
mixed one, good and evil were to contend for 
the mastery. As the last days came on, light 
and knowledge were to spread world-wide by 
means of the gospel, but the nearing end was to 
witness everywhere a reproduction of the care- 
less, pleasure-loving, sinful security of the days 
of Noah and Lot, and mankind be quite aban- 
doned, as prior to the flood, to unrestrained lux- 
urious epicureanism, the delights of the table and 
of married life, to building and field work, 
and the engrossing and absorbing of all minds in 
sinful excess and forgetfulness of God, until the 
very end and the coming of the Son of God." 

Next we quote from Eld. I. C. Welcome : 
" The closing scenes of probationary time and the 
harvest of the world are so fully described and 
clearly stated in the Bible, that all who will 
study and believe its statements will be kept 
from the delusive idea of the conversion of the 
masses of our race to Christ, or of universal 
peace in this world. ' For after that in the wis- 
dom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, 
it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching 
to save them that believe.' 1 Cor. 1: 21. 'This 
gospel of the kingdom ' is c preached in all the 
world for a witness to all nations; and then 
shall the end come.' Matt. 24 : 14. God has 
' visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a peo- 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 153 

pie for his name.' The dosing days of this 
world are to be as those of Noah, and those of 
Lot, — the masses unbelieving, unrighteous, cor- 
rupt, ungovernable. Luke 17 : 26-28. Jude 7. 
They are to be gathered out, as tares from the 
wheat. Matt. 13 ; 40-41. Zeph. 3 : 8. Psalms 
2 : 8-9. Then Christ, with his people, the re- 
deemed from among men, will reign on the 
throne of David, in the restored, renewed earth ; 
when ' the meek will inherit the earth and de- 
light themselves in the abundance of peace.' 
Let this be our Hope." 

The following we extract from a sermon by 
G. R. Kramer. " It is taught by some that this 
world must be converted before the second ad- 
vent of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ. Is it not strange, then, that the apostle 
Paul, in writing to the churches, did not place 
before them as a hope, the conversion of the 
world ? But he always referred to the coming 
of Christ, and pictured no golden age between 
the apostolic age and the coming of the Lord 
Jesus. It was darkness ; it was affliction ; it 
was distress ; it was persecution of the most tre- 
mendous kind. Everywhere he holds before the 
church as the only gorgeous prospect, the re- 
turn of the blessed Jesus from the heavenly 
places. This idea of the conversion of the world 
was not taught in the apostolic age. The apos- 



154 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

ties told the churches that the church must 
struggle, that the church must weep, that the 
church must travail, that the church must now 
pass through a dispensation which was night 
time, and that the only day would be when the 
blessed Jesus, the Son of Righteousness, would 
throw His effulgence from one end of the earth 
to the other. Until that, all is darkness. . . . 
If we wait for the conversion of the world, surely 
we will have to wait a long time before the com- 
ing of the Lord Jesus Christ ; but instead of the 
church converting the world, the world has con- 
verted the church, and guilty Christendom to- 
day is locked in spiritual adultery with this 
world, and it will be only at the coming of the 
high priest, who will send his dart through the 
nominal church and the world, that we will see 
the everlasting righteousness that the Son of God 
will bring in, to the everlasting praise of the 
Most High.'' 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 155 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE FACTS OF THE CASE. 

" The world is very evil; 

The times are waxing late, 
Be sober and keep vigil, 

The Judge is at the gate — 
The Judge that conies in mercy, 

The Judge that comes with might, 
To terminate the evil, 

To diadem the right."— St. Bernard. 

In the preceding chapter we have given the 
teaching of the Bible and of a few Bible students 
in regard to the moral condition of our world. 
We have shown that, as the last days come on, 
as we draw nearer to the dawning of Eternity's 
morning, we must not look for great moral im- 
provement among the masses of the people. 
As we draw near to the momentous time when, 
" with the voice of the archangel and with the 
trump of God," the Son of man back to our 
earth shall come, we need not expect the people 
generally to become more law-abiding, more 
peaceful, more holy, more faithful to one another 
and to God. But on the contrary we have been 
led to look for worldliness and formality in the 
nominal Church, for an undermining of the puri- 
ty of society, for lawlessness, for an abounding 



156 TEE CROWNING HOPE. 

of iniquity, and an increase of that which is 
wrong. And when such a state of things comes 
about, we may know that we are in the "last 
days." When we see such a condition of things 
predominating in the world, we may know that 
we are nearing the time when Jesus shall come 
again, and when the whole world, both of living 
and dead, must be brought before Him to judg- 
ment. 

Where are we now? What is our condition 
now? Is it such as to make us believe that we 
are in the times just previous to the coming of 
Christ? Does the state of the world to-day 
teach us to expect His soon coming ? Are we 
in the "perilous times" of the "last days?" 
We will give a few opinions and statistics re- 
garding the condition of the present age of our 
world. 

We think we are in the "time of the end," 
that we are now in the very " last days." The 
earth truly is full of sin, corruption is plenteous, 
iniquity abounds. Men's hearts are evil, and 
their deeds are vile. Society is rotten, the Church 
is " lukewarm," politics are corrupt, the people 
are restless, " nations are angry." 

I purpose to give quite copious extracts from 
D. T. Taylor's pamphlet entitled " The Increase 
of Crime." Read them carefully. " The sins of 
Noah's age were utter heart-corruption, careless 






THE CROWNING HOPE. 157 

abandonment to pleasure, wide-spread violence, 
and withal, pride and abundance among the 
masses. Men forgot God. ; They knew not' 
till wrath came. ' Even so shall it be in the days 
of the Son of man.' — Luke 17 : 26. Never before 
has the world taken on these old sinful features 
as to-day. 'Worse and worse' is the prophetic 
picture of the future. The spirit and acts of 
those ancient times are visible in all civilized 
lands. Increase of wealth, corruption of heart, 
impurity, deeds of violence, pride, careless secu- 
rity, insane love of pleasure, a craze for money, 
drunkenness, death of conscience, a seeking to 
be # loosed from all moral restraint, doubt and 
atheism, — these are sad, painful features of so- 
ciety to-day. I name them as dark omens of 
His epiphany. Says Mr. Spurgeon : ' Though 
sin and corruption abound and the love of many 
waxeth cold, these are but the tokens of His near 
advent who said it would be so before his 
appearing.' 

A CATALOGUE OF HORRORS. 

u Ours is a polite, cultivated, luxurious, opulent, 
musical, ingenious, erudite, scientific and semi- 
religious age : but for all these, all manner of vice 
and crime increases ; and immorality, divorce, 
prostitution, theft, burglary, peculation, defalca- 
tion, embezzlement, fraud, robbery, suicide, hom- 
icide, violence, murder, assassination by knife, 



158 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

pistol and bomb, outrage, riot, lawlessness, are 
seen everywhere. ' Leagues formed in hell,' says 
Pollock, ' appear on earth : ' Anarchism, Commu- 
nism, Nihilism, the Whisky oligarchy, the Dyna- 
mite fiend, the military madness of kings, increase 
of insanity, — can anything be blacker on the 
world's horizon ? " 

CRIME IN GREAT BRITAIN. 

" Passing to note the rapid spread of crime, 
we recall the startling statement of George Smith 
of London, who says the population of our globe 
has doubled during the last hundred years. Now 
in that long century, art, science, discovery, 
music, invention, intelligence, civilization, all, all 
have advanced. And the Bible and Christianity 
have also advanced. But has crime kept an even 
pace? Has evil been swift -footed as good? 
Well, in Great Britian from 1805 to 1845, while 
the population increased 65 per cent, crime in 
England increased 700 per cent, in Ireland 800 
per cent, and in Scotland 3,600 per cent. Such 
was Christian England's showing for the first 
half of the century. (JBlackicood for July, 1884). 
In the 40 years that have followed, there is in 
that realm no decrease. The convictions for 
crime rose in five years (between 1859 and 
1864) 40 per cent, and in two years (1878— 
1880) they increased 30 per cent. The increase 
is four times faster than the population in Eng- 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 159 

land, and 25 times faster in Scotland. Every 
year England's criminal record leaps up to nearly 
one million." 

CRIME IX AMERICA. 

" How stands crime in our own land ? c Worse 
and worse.' Why, in a single State — our own 
Massachusetts — convictions for crime rose from 
28,149 in 1879 to 48,876 in 1883 : the population 
during that period running up 22 per cent, while 
crime rose up 90 per cent. Think of the crimi- 
nal class almost doubling in only four years in 
one of the best States in the Union ! Taking a 
period of fifteen years ending 1885, and crime 
increased in the. State 125 per cent. Looking 
over our papers, we find that prison records gave 
13,466 as the number in our prisons in the year 
1858. In 1877 the number rose up to 246,599 
prisoners — an increase of persons arrested for 
offenses and crimes of 1,900 per cent in nineteen 
years ! Very much of this startling and alarm- 
ing increase is caused by drunkenness. In seven- 
teen years ending in 1870 the Boston police ar- 
rested 400,000 persons, and 303,000 of them were 
arrested or aided home for drunkenness. Be- 
tween 1856 and 1870 the pupulation of Boston 
increased 53 per cent, but the sin of drunken- 
ness increased 175 per cent." 

Drunkenness has been mentioned. In regard 
to this o^reat evil notice the following short sen- 



160 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

tence, so pregnant with meaning. "But this 
much is certain : in spite of the campaigns of the 
prohibitionists, the liquor traffic is increasing, 
drunkenness and crime due to it are increasing" 
— Wm. G. JEggleston, in Leslie's Weekly, May 
25, 1898, 

From the Boston Sunday Globe of July 5, 
1892, we clip the following. It is from the pen 
of " Joe" Howard, a man who evidently knows 
something of the state of society. " I find my 
daily life confronted by this record, which has 
been going on since the world began, beginning 
with the imprudence of Adam and Eve ; then fol- 
lowed the murderous episode between Cain and 
Abel, and it by long generations of wickedness, 
analagous to that which makes the world rotten 
to the core today, ." 

And further along he says : " On my study 
table lie six morning papers. Every one of 
them is rilled with the details of crime. Why? 
Because crime stalks through the world today as 
it has done in all the days since God first planted 
man upon the earth." 

And yet further on he speaks of " a race of 
men and women whose distinguishing traits in 
the year of our Lord, 1891, are wickedness, cru- 
elty, bestiality, and a yielding to passionate im- 
pulse to a degree infinitely greater than was ever 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 161 

known before. And that, too, in a Christian 
country." 

"It is a statistical fact that crime and un- 
godliness are rapidly on the increase in both 
high and low society, and the only comfort the 
friends of Jesus have is in the fact that He will 
soon come and put an end to violence and infi- 
delity throughout the world." — Frank Burr. 

"In both high and low society." Some may 
think that in the higher and wealthier circles of 
society there is an exemption from vice, that it 
is the lower classes only who are corrupt. Prob- 
ably if the truth were known the " upper crust " 
would be found to be rotten through and 
through. D. T. Taylor, when speaking of 
crime in Great Britian, said : " Recent develop- 
ments in high circles show how rotten is rich so- 
ciety from the Prince of Wales clown, how much 
like Sodom is London, and with what a bold and 
brazen front vice and crime stalk on without re- 
form or shame." 

On the 28th of May, 1893, Rev. Thomas 
Dixon, Jr., delivered a sermon in New York, on 
the subject, "So-called High Society." We 
q.uote from him : " Recent sad tragedies in this 
circle of people, the daily record of the divorce 
court, and the hundreds of society rumors that 
never reach the press, but reach the ears of those 
who touch the lives of these people, indicate a 



162 THE CBOWNING HOPE. 

condition of morals that remind us of the days 
of ancieut empires that preceded their fall and 
ruin. The description of the scenes enacted in 
this circle of society find their counterpart in the 
days that preceded the crash of the Roman 
world, and the debauchery of the French court 
that preceded the revolution ; and presages for 
this society, as surely as there is a God in 
heaven, a day of wrath in which the chaff shall 
be burned up." 

I insert here almost entire a short editorial 
from the World* s Crisis : 

STKOXG WOKDS BY JOSEPH COOK. 

" Of all living men Rev. Joseph Cook is the 
keenest, most comprehensive, most accurate ob- 
server of current events in all the world, and in 
all realms of society. He catches the trend of the 
popular thought as by intuitive foresight . He 
watches the developments of evil in politics and 
in religion with sleepless perception, and seldom 
miscalculates. He fearlessly arraigns great sins 
in church and State, not sparing political corrup- 
tion, social infidelity, or ecclesiastical apostacy. 
He is the boldest denouncer of polygamy and 
the most powerful foe of the saloon in this land. 
While we would not quote him on Christian doc- 
trine, we accept his words touching the present 
condition of the world as of great significance. 
And here are some of his latest utterances. 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 163 

' Three hundred thousand divorces in this 
country the last twenty years. And you say 
there isn't any need of revivals and outpourings 
of the Holy Spirit. If our nation rushes on in 
sin as it is going now I do not wonder that the 
Adventists say that the w r orld is coming to an 
end shortly. If the brakes are not put on, and 
there are not general revivals in the cities, and a 
much deeper work of grace upon the hearts of 
God's people, and they turn to the Lord, there 
will be a winding up of all things here.' 

"And what is there to hinder 'Our nation 
from rushing on in sin as it is going now?' Our 
national disloyalty to God and his AYord gathers 
strength every hour. The pollution of our poli- 
tics is something appalling. The stenchful over- 
flow of our elections, State and national, is 
enough to poison the morals of our young men 
past cure. When our great party agitations are 
on, honesty and honor seem unknown. Ballots 
are bought and sold as marketable commodities. 

Rum is one of the most potent elements in our 
election methods. It dictates candidates for 
office. It makes and unmakes representatives 
and congressmen. It holds the balance of 
power in this country, and in many places is the 
power itself. Are there any indications that 
1 the brakes ' are likely to be put on ? 

" In the religious realm a refined, subtile, skep- 



164 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

tical philosophy is rapidly undermining the an- 
cient faith and the Scriptures themselves. The 
rationalistic is pushing the experimental out of 
sight. To whom shall we look to put on ' the 
brakes ? ' 

" What Mr. Cook is beginning to see holy 
prophets and apostles clearly saw long time ago, 
as sure to come in the ' Last days.' ' Wicked 
men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, 
deceiving and being deceived.' 

" Truly — as our great scientist and accurate ob- 
server says — * There will soon be an end of all 
things here.' For, as Luther said, c No amend- 
ment is to be expected.' Such men as Totten, 
Cook, and Dimbleby are crying the alarm. 
When will the pulpit awake from its dreaming 
and warn the people of the coming indigna- 
tion ? " 

THE SOCIAL EVIL. 

Perhaps there never was another time in the 
world's history when the social evil was so prev- 
alent among all classes of people as at the pres- 
ent day. Sexuality is the ruling passion of the 
lives of many. Their sexual lusts are unbridled. 
Free scope and exercise are given to them. 
That which, to a pure heart, is the most disgust- 
ing and revolting is alarmingly rife. Young men 
are lost to all sense of honor and decency. 
Young women seem to be forsaken by those 



THE CROWNING ROPE. 165 

finer feelings of virtue and modesty that are so 
becoming womanhood. Moral corruption is all 
around, and ofttimes it exists where it is least ex- 
pected. Our cities are veritable cesspools of 
pollution ; and I fear that, in many places, the 
rural districts are not much better. And this 
evil is growing rather than dying out. It is 
among the most contagious of all evils, and 
sweeps onward with the force and destructive- 
ness of a prairie fire. 

" Our great cities literally swim in vice. . . . 
The alluring goddess, Licentiousness, sits a queen 
in many a court, at many a chancel." — E. A. 
Stockman. 

" The extent to which the external form of li- 
centiousness, known as the social evil, has be- 
come prevalent is awakening serious apprehen- 
sions for the future of American society. If 
prostitution undermined and ruined Greece, 
and Egypt, and Rome, and Venice; if, in a 
spiritual sense it has enervated the Latin races 
of the Continent, our modern enterprise and our 
multitudes of churches will not save us, if this 
same vice is allowed to capture our youth. 

u A traveling man — an elder in the Presby- 
terian church — when asked, ' Do you find, in 
your travels, that our young men practise to any 
great extent, the social evil ? ' replied, ' Oh, it is 
horrible.' A physician of good standing who 



166 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

was asked, ' To what extent do our young men 
violate the Seventh Commandment? ' said ' Nine- 
ty out of every hundred cohabit with women be- 
fore marriage.' So prevalent is the violation of 
chastity in this respect, that young men who have 
kept themselves pure are laughed at in some 
communities. Another physician when asked 
the same question, replied : ' It would astonish 
you — not ten men out of a hundred are guilt- 
less.' Still another physician — a member of the 
church and a praying man — said : c I have 
practiced medicine in this county,' naming it, ' for 
more than a quarter of a century, and I tell you 
not five young men out of a hundred are pure.' 
Still another of unimpeached character and 
grown old in his practice, said : ' When I 
was a young man, not one woman in twenty 
was solicited for her ruin ; now I sometimes think 
that not one in twenty escapes solicitation.' " — 
Rev. J. W. Clokey, D. D. 

To show that this vilest of all evils, instead of 
diminishing, is becoming even more terribly 
prevalent, we will give just one quotation from a 
man who has looked into the subject. Rev. 
Thomas Dixon, Jr., in a sermon on "The Social 
Evil," said : " The plain truth is that the social 
evil is increasing each day in power and viru- 
lence, and threatens more and more the founda- 
tions of social order." 



THE CROWXING HOPE. 167 

Can it be possible that this most abominably 
vile, most detestably low, most horribly degrad- 
ing, of all evils, is on the increase in the world? 
So it seems. O, Lord, deliver us ! Surely the 
world is about ripe for judgment. Can God 
allow such filthiness to exist much longer? 
Would it not, on His part, be an act of mercy, 
as well as of justice, for Him to stay the world in 
its downward course of corruption, and bring an 
end to these things by calling a guilty world be- 
fore Him to be judged? 

In Scripture which has been before quoted we 
were informed, among other things, that in the 
"last days" men should be "fierce." And is 
that the condition today ? We believe it is, to a 
greater extent than most people think. Xot- 
withstanding the culture of these present times, 
notwithstanding the refinement that should go 
with advanced civilization, it is yet a fact which 
we cannot dodge that brutality abounds. What 
a time this is of suicide, of murder, of horrible 
mutilation ! What a time of bomb throwing, of 
dynamite outrages, of gigantic and heartless 
scheming against the lives and property of 
others ! But we will take but one phase of 
"fierceness," and let that teach us as to the con- 
dition of the times. 

I had an idea that, of late, the court of 
" Judge Lynch " was not sitting so often as it 



168 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

once did. But the following clipped from 
Leslie's Weekly of June 9, 1892, shows that I 
was mistaken. And it tends to show the fierce- 
ness, brutality, and bloodthirstiness of men in 
the last quarter of the nineteenth century. 

"The extent to which lynchings have been 
carried on is shown by some authoritative statis- 
tics carefully compiled by the Chicago Tribune. 
In 1882, according to this authority, there were 
lynchings of fifteen whites and fifty-two negroes 
in the South. Since then the crime has steadily 
increased until in 1891 there were lynchings of 
forty-eight whites and one hundred and sixty- 
nine negroes. This increase has been largely in 
those localities where public sentiment is not yet 
fully awakened to the enormity of the crime, 
and where this method of punishing offenders is 
justified on the ground that only by summary 
punishment can a certain class of crimes be really 
prevented. This view is mere assumption, as 
statistics show the fact to be that the great 
majority of lynchings have been for offenses 
which could easily have been reached by the 
orderly process of the law. Thus in the last 
eight years there have been two hundred and 
fifty-two lynchings for murder, forty-four for 
robbery, and thirty-seven for incendiarism; 
while of the total but two-hundred and sixty- 
nine were for the one offense of rape, which is 



THE CROWNING HQPE. 169 

regarded by our Southern brethren as outlawing 
the perpetrator. The inhuman character of some 
of these lynchings is well illustrated by the state- 
ment that, of one hundred and sixty-nine negroes 
who were lynched last year, seven were burned 
alive, one was flayed, and one disjointed. This 
statement was made before the Methodist Gen- 
eral Conference by a clergyman who is in a posi- 
tion to obtain trustworthy information on the 
subject." 

We care not to make this too lengthy, and so 
we will give but one more quite extended quo- 
tation. After showing that the times in which 
we live are " perilous " religiously, morally, polit- 
ically, etc., the writer says : " What may we 
learn from Fenianism, rattening, strikes, dyna- 
mite outrages, Irish murders, boycotting, anti- 
rent paying, and wholesale intimidation ? These 
things all tell one tale. They show that the 
cement has fallen out of the walls of society. 
The whole machine is unscrewed and unpinned, 
and out of order. The very foundations of our 
social fabric are giving away. Is not this peril- 
ous? I touch all these things very slightly. 
I might easily add dark colors to the picture. 
But I have said enough, I suspect, to set any 
sensible man thinking. I have brought forward 
facts, plain facts, which I defy anyone to dis- 
pute, about Romanism, morality, politics and 



170 TEE CROWNING HOPE. 

social order. I say confidently that the existence 
of these facts justifies the assertion with which I 
began. They prove that our times are 'peril- 
ous times.' .... "If things go on as they do 
much longer, the sun of old England will go down 
amidst a hurricane of confusion and trouble, 

such as the world has never yet seen 

Our .... important duty is to be continually 
looking for the coming and kingdom of our Lord 
Jesus Christ. This is the great event which will 
wind up the affairs of all nations. Then, and 
then only, will sin, disorder and superstition be 
put down completely, and come to an end. . . . 

" I bring before my readers a passage of Script- 
ure which I commend to their special attention : 
' There shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, 
and in the stars ; and upon the earth distress of 
nations, with perplexity ; the sea and the waves 
roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and 
for looking after those things which are coming 
on the earth ; for the powers of heaven shall be 
shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man 
coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 
And when these things begin to come to pass, then 
look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemp- 
tion draweth nigh.' — Luke 21 : 25-28. 

" I make no comment on these words of my 
Master. I place them before my readers in 
their naked simplicity, and prefer letting them 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 171 

speak for themselves. If the words of the apos- 
tle which begin this paper, and the words of the 
Lord Jesus which I have just quoted, only set 
my readers thinking, I shall be abundantly 
thankful. We are in the last days, and perilous 
times have come/" 

The above words are from the pen of Right 
Rev. J. C. Ryle. They were written some few 
years ago. They were true then, but there is a 
sense in which they are even truer now. There 
has been a development of evil. It is the 
opinion of many who are looking into these 
things, that the world has been progressing in sin 
very rapidly of late years. Surely the world is 
about ripe for harvest. The Lord will suffer 
these things but little longer. We are drawing 
near to the closing scenes of earth's bloody 
drama. Soon the awful trump of God will 
sound. Soon the great Judge will come. Surely, 
the world is on the down grade. It is gaining 
momentum as it travels. Its speed is being 
accelerated. Faithful watchman have long been 
waving the danger signal, and trying to stay the 
downward rush of the train that is tearing madly 
onward to dreadful destruction. But their 
efforts are futile. The passengers seem not to 
be aware of their own condition. They appear 
unmindful of their danger. They are lost in 
pleasures, in the cares and ambitions of life. 



172 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

They are unmindful of God. Yet onward and 
onward, downward and downward, they rush. 
By-and-by and the end will come. The crash 
will come. Cries of despair and shrieks of terror 
will arise, and down to irreparable ruin will 
plunge a guilty world. May God help us that 
we may not be of those who, because of their 
sins and their rejection of the offers of mercy, 
meet so awful a fate. 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 173 






CHAPTER IX. 

ARE WE NBAS THE END ? 

The corning of the Lord draweth nigh. 

The Judge standeth before the door.— James. 

Where are we on our voyage over the ocean 
of Time ? Are we, as it were, just embarking ? 
Are we just setting out on our journey? After 
nearly 6,000 years of human history, of sin and 
sickness, sorrow and disappointment, pain and 
death ; after so long a lapse of time, a time tilled 
with blasted hopes and blighted lives, with ruined 
homes and broken hearts, — is, after all, the voy- 
age of earthly, sin-cursed human history only 
fairly begun ? Some have said that the world now 
is but in its infancy. If this be true then a long, 
long, and dreary time stretches ahead of the race 
before it shall come to ripe fruition and full per- 
fection at the Advent of the Redeemer. Must 
humanity toil onward and worry forward through 
sloughs of despond, clouds of gloominess, hours 
of suffering; with tired bodies, wearied brains, 
and sorrowing hearts ; — for thousands of years 
yet to come ? Must history still go on and on in 
the future, repeating itself in man's disloyalty to 
God, in his injustice to his fellow man, in his per- 



174 THE CB OWNING HOPE. 

petual failure to attain to his highest hopes, in 
his inability to lift himself from the pit of iniquity 
and dissatisfaction into which he has been 
plunged? Or, on the other hand is the voy- 
age nearly completed? Are we nearing the 
shores of Eternity? Are we almost at the " end 
of the world?" Is Jesus soon to come? As 
another writes : 

" Are we nearing this grandest of all events ? 
Are there causes, significant with prediction, 
that we are truly nearing time's end? Do we 
read it in abounding wickedness? Do we see it 
in the coldness and lukewarmness of a formal, 
lifeless church? Are there not tokens of it in 
the vast warlike preparations of the old world ? 
Do we more and more realize it, in the alarming 
increase of crime? Do we note it in the strange 
phenomena in the heavens above? Do we heed 
it in the fateful stamp of the increasing earth- 
quake's shock ? Are we not encompassed about 
with a cloud of portentous witnesses, as to the 
certainty and nearness of that grand event?" 

We do not purpose here to enter into an ar- 
gument attempting to show our proximity to 
that end for which the Church so long has looked, 
and which the wicked so long have feared. Ar- 
guments showing that the mortal history of our 
race is about accomplished, that soon the world 
must stand before the awful tribunal of an offend- 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 175 

ed God, have been left to other and abler pens. 
We make no pretentions to being a prophetic 
scholar. But we thought it might be well to 
give, for the consideration of the reader, our 
opinion upon this subject, and also the thoughts 
of a few others. 

Our belief is that we are nearing Time's end. 
One thing we know, Christ is coming sometime. 
At some hour of the future, Time will close and 
Eternity will begin. The present course of this 
world will at some time be finished. At some 
time, the end will come. So teaches the word 
of God. And we believe we are nearer to the 
time when Christ shall return to earth than most 
people even dream. Our opinion is that the 
coming of Jesus is near, even at the door. His 
foot, so to speak, is upon the threshold, His hand 
upon the latch. Soon and suddenly He will come 
in to view the guests, and woe unto that one who 
shall be found without the wedding garment. 
We do not think that the decades will become 
centuries, and that centuries will lose themselves 
in millenniums, and that millenniums will roll 
themselves into vast future ages, before we shall 
witness the fearful scenes of judgment. But 
quickly, quickly, will Jesus come. Speedily, 
speedily, He will return. Soon, soon, will He 
be here. While the world is lazily dreaming of 
safety, the awful trump of God may sound. 



176 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

While people are busily engaged in the temporal 
affairs of fast-fleeting Time, the archangel's voice 
may be heard. While men and women are put- 
ting far off the evil day, while perhaps, they are 
thinking that it cannot come in their lifetime ; 
suddenly, O, how suddenly, a change will come 
over the spirit of their dream, and they be brought 
to their senses by the voice of the Son of God as 
it speaks life to those that are dead, as it 
speaks terror to those who are living in their 
sins, as it speaks judgment to all. The condition 
of the world betokens that the judgment is near. 
The fulfillment of prophecy gives us reasons, as 
never before, to expect the immediate coming 
of the long-absent Nobleman. 

It looks as if the condition of the world were 
just what the Bible teaches it will be at the time 
of the ending of earthly affairs. We may know 
when harvest time has come by noting the con- 
dition of the crops. And when the fruit is ripe 
the skilled husbandman does not wait a long 
time before he gathers it. As for us, none of us 
could know what constitutes a ripeness for the 
eternal harvest, a ripeness for judgment, unless 
it had been revealed to us by God. But the 
Lord has shown what is to be the condition of 
the world just preceding the time when the 
judgment shall set and the books shall be opened. 
For a long time now the crop of humanity and 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 177 

of human guilt has been ripening. At last it has 
arrived at that state where it seems as if the 
heavenly Husbandman would not delay much 
longer. 

And then, again, according to the prophetic 
word of God, we are led to believe that the sands 
of Time have nearly all run out. Many things 
were predicted to occur before the return of our 
Lord from heaven. These predicted events are 
now nearly all in the past. But little remains to 
be accomplished. The consistent state for a 
child of God to be in is to be looking for the 
near coming of Jesus, and to be prepared to 
welcome Him with joy. With confidence we 
may look to the heavens, and expect them soon 
to glow with the presence of Him whom we 
adore. 

Said Captain R. Kelso Carter in '< A Scientific 
Study of the Millennium : " " Again and again 
we are informed of the suddenness of this great 
change in the ages, the comparison being made 
by the Lord and the Apostles with the sudden- 
ness of the ISToachian deluge and the destruction 
of the cities of the plain ; and everywhere the de- 
scription is coupled with the warning to watch 
and pray that we may escape these terrible 
things, and be found approved of the Lord at 
His appearing. The comparison is plainly lit- 
eral. The first great destruction of the earth by 



178 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

water is set against the second deluge by fire. 
Let us not be too ready to quote the old proverb, 
4 After us the deluge.' The cycles are wound 
up, and the clock strikes whether we are sleep- 
ing or waking." And further on he says ; 
" Search the Scriptures and see if these things 
are so. Search scientific truth and ascertain if 
they are consistent. But if Scripture and sci- 
ence alike show them to be possible and prob- 
able, remember that to the wise c forewarned is 
forearmed.' Certainly the solar system is not 
eternal, as it is now constituted. Certainly noth- 
ing is more possible than that this earth may en- 
counter without a moment's warning a gigantic 
stream of huge meteors, for space is filled with 
them. As in the case of our great steamers in a 
fog, no very terrible collision has yet occurred ; 
but we wonder why, for it is so very possible. 
And certainly the Bible does declare these 
awful events to be at hand. The chronological 
clock is almost striking the hour, Shall we 
awake ? " 

Some years ago Prof. L. T. Townsend said : 
" TThen the apostles said the time was short they 
were correct. But the time is shorter today 
than in the tin^ of the apostles. The impres- 
sion is deepening that we are approaching a crisis 
such as the world has never known. Prophe- 
cies are being rapidly fulfilled, and even scien- 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 179 

tific men are somewhat uneasy. The moon is 
behaving strangely ; her actual place in the 
heavens is so far from her calculated place that a 
sailor may be misled as to his longtitude at least 
five miles. What does this mean ? Perhaps 
not much. Perhaps it means that the beam of 
the universe is beginning to tip. The planet 
Mercury is evidently feeling some constraining 
power that astronomers have not been able to 
discover. The past year, as everybody says, has 
been a very strange one. From all this it is not 
.unreasonable to infer that something will take 
place which will make men's ears tingle. At 
least, the age in which we are living is 

CHAKGED WITH MOMENTOUS ISSUES. 

While we would not attempt to trespass on 
the Bible, in making any effort to fix a day, or a 
year, still, looking to God who alone knows 
times and seasons, we would have our feet firmly 
on the Rock that no storm of fire can wreck, 
while our gaze should be turned to those habita- 
tions that are in the heavens." 

As late as June, 1893, Miles Grant said: 
" Events are fast approaching a grand crisis. 
The impression is deep and growing deeper in 
the minds of the closest observers of the signs of 
the times, that some great event is about to 
transpire. TThen we turn to the Bible prophets 
we find we have reached 'the time of the end,' 



180 ' THE CROWNING HOPE. 

long foretold ; and that the ' great event ' is the 
second coming of Christ." 

Said D. T. Taylor, a well informed and pro- 
lific writer on this grave subject : " The best ex- 
egetes, the best biblical critics, the best students 
of sacred prophecy, the best missionaries, the 
best evangelists, the best revivalists, the most 
noted pastors, the best informed Christian men 
and women on the globe today are looking for 
Christ's speedy coming A few more ris- 
ing and setting suns and the waning solemn 
years of this fast closing age will be ended, a 
new age will begin." 

Said Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage at one time : 
" There may be many years of hard work yet be- 
fore the consummation, but the signs are to me so 
encouraging that I would not be unbelieving if I 
saw the wings of the apocalyptic angel spread for 
its last triumphant flight in this day's sunset" 

Said Mr. Moody on one occasion : " The 
trump of God may be sounded, for anything 
we know, before I finish this sermon — at any 
rate we are told that He will come as a thief in 
the night, and at an hour when many look not 
for Him." " I have heard Newman Hall say 
that he knew no reason why Christ might not 
come before he got through his sermon." 

I. C. Welcome, after bringing forward some 
of the many facts showing the fulfillment of 



THE CB OWNING HOPE. 181 

prophecy and our proximity to that event, the 
coming of the Christ, writes as follows : 

" The above facts are but a tithe of the incon- 
trovertible evidence drawn from the sacred 
Scriptures, and their literal fulfillment, which 
demonstrate that the end of the Gospel age, the 
end of probationary time, is very near. With 
these accumulating evidences before the careful 
and prayerful students of the Bible, it is not a 
strange thing that such a large number of ear- 
nest and observing Christians are confidently 
and constantly expecting the immediate return 
of the Lord from heaven." 

Rev. Lyman Abbott has expressed the idea 
that if the early Church made a mistake in 
thinking that the Advent of Jesus would come 
in their time, people in these days are liable to 
commit an equally grave error by thinking it to be 
so far off that it cannot come in our day. But 
why may it not come in our day ? for, if it comes 
at all, and it certainly will come, it surely must 
come in somebody's day. And those in whose 
time it does come will not be expecting it. On 
the contrary they will be crying " Peace and safe- 
ty," and putting this event in the remote and 
misty future. And why may it not come soon, 
even before we pass from the busy scenes of 
active life? Eighteen hundred years have 
passed since the early Church looked and longed 



182 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

for the consummation of their sweetest Hope. 
During that time many changes have come 
about, and events have occurred which make the 
circumstances different and have changed the 
aspect of things. Things which must needs 
occur before the end, and events which show we 
are nearing the " time of restitution," are now 
in the past, and are recorded on the pages of the 
world's history. The word of God has been 
fulfilling, the prophetic declarations are about 
accomplished, and why is it necessary that the 
Lord tarry longer ? 

Men may scoff and oppose, and may disbelieve 
the truths of God's word. In derision they may 
ask, " Where is the promise of His coming ? " 
But their position regarding the matter will not 
alter the facts of the case, nor keep back the ap- 
proaching wave of destruction ; for " at the time 
appointed the end shall be." 

And those who scoff at these solemn things are 
just doing that which is one of the causes why 
we think that these are indeed the very last days. 
For Peter prophesied that " in the last days 
mockers shall come with mockery, walking after 
their own lusts, and saying, Where is the prom- 
ise of His coming?" — H. V. 

O, how momentous are these times ! How 
precious is every moment that remains ! And 
how it should be improved by us in making our 



THE CROWNING HOPE. 183 

preparations for that august event, and, also, in 
doing what we can to get others ready. Our 
time should not be spent in useless dallying, nor 
in following sinful and fading pleasures ; but we 
should be on the alert in the service of the Lord. 
We should not be half-hearted in His work, but 
should be as earnest and as zealous as though 
He were coming tomorrow. 

Soon, O how soon, will the radiant heavens 
part ! Soon, O how soon, will the trump of God 
be heard ! Soon, O how soon, will a guilty world 
stand before the judgment seat of Christ ! What 
a time that will be ! No hiding then. No cov- 
ering up of our dirty deeds. No concealing our 
sins. No shifting of the blame from ourselves 
to some one else. Each must stand there for 
himself. Then " every man shall bear his own 
burden." The secrets of hearts shall then be 
revealed. Things long hidden in our breast will 
then be as open as the shining sun. Evil long 
covered up will then be as disagreeably open as 
an uncovered cesspool. And what gigantic cess- 
pools of corruption will the hearts of some be 
seen to be. Are we ready to have our lives 
laid open ? Are we ready to have our secret 
thoughts exposed ? Are we ready to . have the 
light of judgment turned full upon our charac- 
ter ? If not, then we had better be making good 
use of the time that now is ours. " Boast not 



184 THE CROWNING HOPE. 

thyself of tomorrow, for thou knowest not what 
a day may bring forth." But NOW, while you 
have opportunity, make preparation. Make 
your peace with God. Mercy's gates are still 
open. God's ear will yet hear a penitent cry. 
The blood of Jesus will yet atone for sin, and 
will cleanse whiter than snow. Haste, O haste ! 
Delay no longer! But now, now, go to God 
with all your sins, and He will graciously re- 
ceive, and pardon all guilt. You yet can be fit- 
ted so as to be able to stand before the Son of 
God when, in His majesty, He shall soon ap- 
pear. 

In bringing this last chapter to a close, I will 
do it in the words of benediction by the holy 
Paul : " Now the God of hope fill you with all 
joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound 
in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost." 



"Our Hope" is the title of a book by E. A. Stockman. It 
treats of the Second Advent of Christ. Get one and read it. 
Price, 60 cents. Send to Chas. H. Woodman, 144 Hanover St., 
Boston, Mass. 



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